


The Rabble

by RosaFloribunda



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: #rememberPeggy2k17, Anglicisation, Christianity, Everyone is French not just Laf, F/M, Homophobia, Illnesses, Jumping on the Lafayette is gender nonbinary bandwagon, Kid Fic, M/M, Minor Character Death, My poor baby Phillip, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Marquis de Lafayette, Orphanage, Orphanage AU, TW: Homophobia, it's vaguely malaria-like but not quite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-18 09:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10614477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosaFloribunda/pseuds/RosaFloribunda
Summary: "On the tiny, little known Caribbean island of Saint-Denis there were only two languages spoken.French.And pidgin French.Fortunately for George Washington, it just so happened that he knew both."After Washington is fired from his job at an inner-city school for 'incitement to revolution' the only job he can get is assistant master at an orphanage on the smallest, poorest island in the West Indies. There, he finds the children being presided over by the tyrannical Bishop Seabury. He sets out to change things. I. E. Hamilton orphanage AU.





	1. L'Orphelinat

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: HOMOPHOBIA  
> Please don't read if you could be affected negatively by that! :) everyone else go right ahead!

On the tiny, little known Caribbean island of Saint-Denis there were only two languages spoken. 

French.

And pidgin French.

Fortunately for George Washington, it just so happened that he knew both. As a son of the Caribbean himself, he had grown up spending holidays with his dad on their (much bigger, much richer) island helping to grow and pack the world-famous Washington Brand tobacco, and schooldays with his scatter-brained Broadway star mother in her New York apartment. When the time came to choose between college and a permanent job on the plantation, it was a no brainer. He chose the city. And he had worked there all his life as first a high school teacher's aid, then a teacher of humanities and part-time counsellor, then vice-principal, and then, and then...

Yet somehow here he was, back again, on an island that reminded him in a nostalgic way of his childhood.

It was really the only job available. George Hanover (or The King, as the kids called him), the principal of his inner city school, PS 741, had gotten him fired on some bullshit claim of "incitement to revolution". _Seriously?_ George had asked the school board in the calmest voice he could muster. _You're seriously going to fire me because I simply said that one of Hanover's new schemes to raise the cafeteria prices was going to reduce the number of pupils getting an adequate meal every day?_

Turns out they were.

And because of Hanover's influences, the only job he was able to get after that little incident was that of assistant master in the Saint-Denis orphanage. Now, the place was so poor, it didn't even have a website. But some pictures were emailed to him by the charity who were to provide him with his paychecks. They showed a large group of children standing, unsmiling, outside a shack of corrugated iron and tarpaulin. George had almost gasped aloud in shock. Well, sure there had been a hurricane there - TEN YEARS AGO! Wasn't anyone providing these children with aid? They looked such sweet little things as well in their khaki uniforms, long pinafores for the girls and shorts and button-up shirts for the boys, although the clothes were almost all too short or too long and their shoes (brown plimsolls) were in a complete state of disrepair. One thing that was, however, heartening to see was the mixture of races in the group outside the shack. Black children freely mingled with white and mixed-race, and George had even seen some Asian and Hispanic kids. A small crowd in particular caught his eye; standing slightly apart from the rest, they even had small smiles on their thin faces. Five girls and seven boys. Aged about ten to eleven. George remembered how he had smiled likewise to see them, and how one little boy, his dark hair falling to his shoulders and his khaki shirt too long for his sleeves, reminded George so much of his little brother Charles he had to swallow down a painful lump in his throat. And on the journey there, part by plane to the nearest airport on the island of Aruba, part by fishing-boat, he couldn't resist sneaking occasional glances at the piece of paper.

He recognised the boy the second he disembarked the boat. Yes - although to someone else, someone who hadn't known Charles the way he had, the two might look completely different, to George they were like twins. The dark, fiercely intelligent eyes, the strong noses, the tiny stature, the proud posture.

"You the new master?" the boy asked softly, and in English.

George was rather taken aback; he had expected there would be very little knowledge of any language apart from the two previously mentioned. Nevertheless, he answered in English: "Yes, son, that's me. Mais," he added hastily, "nous pouvons parler en français si tu veux?"

_We can talk in French if you want?_

The boy seemed to shrink a little. His only, rather frightened, reply was, "We got to talk English in _l'orphelinat_. It's the rule."

"Oh," said George blankly. "Um, sure?"

"And don't call me 'son'."

The boy turned away so fast as soon as he spoke that George wasn't even sure he'd heard correctly. "Excuse me?"

"Never mind," the child replied quietly. "I got sent to lead you to _l'orphelinat_. You coming?"

George nodded. As he followed the boy along white sands, the midday sun beating down upon his uncovered head (that was stupid, he thought to himself; you should have brought a hat, Washington) and up a winding wooden path, he made further attempts to engage him in conversation.

"Er. Well. Maybe we got off on the wrong footing. My name's George, what's yours?"

"Aléxandre," the boy replied automatically, then shook his head furiously. "I mean, Alexander. Alex."

"Well, Alex, and how old are you?"

"Twelve, sir." Alex darted a shy glance at George as he led him across a street of small houses in just as much a state of disrepair as the orphanage had been in the photo.

George raised his eyebrows. The boy was so small and thin he looked only ten. But that could just be genetic. The Society who ran the orphanage had assured him that the children were well-fed, a portion of money even being set aside for treats like candy and ice-cream. Although, looking at Alex, he didn't seem like he'd ever seen much of either of those foods so loved by children of all kinds.

"Call me George," he replied eventually. "And, in the interests of honesty, I'm fifty-two."

Alex's eyes went wide. "Whoah!" he gasped. "Really?! On Saint-Denis, most people don't live past twenty years, and some of 'em get half as many. I never seen anyone as old as you!"

George chuckled at the kid's obvious amazement. "Gee, thanks!"

"Well. Well, now you know I didn't mean it like that, sir. I'm..." Here Alex paused to try to summon the right words to his mind. "I'm sorry if that was forward."

"Not at all," George said easily.

They walked in silence for a few hundred yards, Alex's head bowed as he stared at the ground, George humming a little tune - what was it called, 'History Has Its Eyes On You'? He used to play it to his senior debate team to get them fired up for competitions - until the orphanage rose into sight over the crest of a small hill.

"I think we're here," he said brightly. Alex nodded, his head still down. And George could see why. The orphanage was just as bad as it had looked in the photos, perhaps worse; in the mild wind its multiple flaps of tarpaulin blew this way and that and its iron poles that looked rather like those used for painters' scaffolding creaked alarmingly. It was only two stories high, with two tiny wooden outhouses next to it that George hoped weren't toilets, because that would be  _disgusting_. Outside it were a huge crowd of children. Many, many more than had been in the picture. George thought there might be a hundred. How could they all fit in the fairly small building?

As he watched from a distance, the kids started lining up, overseen by what looked like a man in black robes. George felt nothing but sympathy for this poor guy, especially considering the heat - and imagine having to deal with that many children all by oneself! Well, George Washington was here now, and he would help share the burden.

He was feeling so important that he didn't notice Alex turn pale and start sprinting forward over the dirty sand strewn with rubbish and bits of driftwood. And by the time he did, it was too late. He could only keep walking in that direction and hope that the boy's intentions were good.

A few dozen yards closer to the building and he started hearing what the children were saying. Numbers - in English, predictably - one after the other, counting themselves off as they had done on George's brief stint in the army.

"One!"

"Two!"

"Three!"

"Four!"

And so on. By the time Alex had run up to the black-robed man, they had reached twenty-one. George could hear (very faintly) the man scold him: "Nineteen, you're late."

Alex made a sarcastic sort of bow and apologised. He was sent scampering back into line between a tall black boy with an enormous, puffy head of hair, and what looked like that same boy's brother, who had his hair a little more restrained in a neat ponytail.

George walked through the gate of the badly-kept picket fence around the orphanage just as three girls near the end, one tall and dark with angry eyes, one willowy and pale, and one small and dainty with skin like caramel, sounded off.

"Sixty-eight."

"Sixty-nine."

Surprisingly, no one laughed at that. Maybe they didn't have enough English to get the joke, or maybe most of them were just too young.

The girl at the end, the smallest in the whole line, screwed up her forehead and ventured, "...Sixty-ten?"

A ripple of laughter and intake of breath ran through the line. The black-robed man stared at her for a brief moment, then took a deliberate step up to her so he was towering over the poor girl. "What did you just say, Margaret?" he asked menacingly. His accent was English, clipped and precise, like 'King' George Hanover's.

"Je m'appelle Marguerite, _Monsigneur_ ," she whispered, hardly daring to look him in the eye.

Ah. This man was a bishop. That would explain the robes.

The girl next to her, the pale one, whose eyes George could now see were full of compassion, elbowed her sister. (For he was sure they were sisters despite their difference in looks.) "Margaret!" she said with a nervous laugh and a broad Caribbean French accent not unlike Alex's. "You do not mean that, you do yourself a disservice. And besides, the number is seventy. You have been number seventy for many months."

"Elizabeth is right," the bishop said chidingly. "You're a big girl now, Margaret, and it's high time you learnt your numbers. I will disregard that silly nonsense about your name because of the presence of our honoured guest -"

George jumped a foot in the air. He had no idea the man had known he was there.

"- But rest assured, next time I shan't be so lenient. Right! Inside for lunch! Quick march!"

The children marched. And they marched in complete silence.

The bishop turned around, rearranged his grim features into a smile with a conscious effort, and put out his hand to shake George's. "Good afternoon to you, sir! The name's Seabury, Samuel Seabury. You can call me Samuel, but the children certainly can't, although they probably do in private, ha-ha!"

George tried to laugh with him but failed.

"You're George Washington, I know. Shame you're not a member of the clergy. I did ask for a curate. It's not really my place to say Mass every Sunday for these poor little sinners, but one has to make some sacrifices! Sorry about Margaret, by the way. She's new, well, fairly new. Only arrived ten weeks ago or so, although so did her sisters and they seem to have settled in much more easily. But Margaret can't get used to our very simple rule."

"No talking French?" George took a wild guess.

"Exactly! Knew you'd get it in one, old fellow. We only talk the Queen's English around here. And that goes for names as well. All those Pierres and Maries in the village may do just as they like, but at Seabury's orphanage they're Peter and Mary." He laughed again.

George felt rather sick. Surely it wasn't right to change a child's name, to destroy that link to their lost parents, to their very culture?

"So," Seabury continued heartily, "if you hear any of those little monkeys _parleying français_ -" his mock accent made George cringe - "let me know and I'll take the appropriate measures. That alright?"

"...Alright," George said after a few moments of slightly incredulous silence. In fact, he had no intention of doing so. As far as he was concerned the children could 'parley' whatever language they so chose.

"Let's go in, then. I can introduce you to Martha. She's the cook, comes every day from the village. We serve fairly standard fare here - porridge for breakfast, soup for lunch, bread and cheese for dinner, and repeat. Fish on Fridays, meat on Sundays. Of course, being in charge here, we masters are entitled to certain privileges." Seabury winked at George as he led him inside.

The main room, a cafeteria, so to speak, was just as gloomy as George had expected. There were no windows, and the only light came from several gas lamps (gas! What was this, the nineteen-hundreds?) and a few places in the walls where the tarpaulin had come undone and a few beams of sunlight shone through. Three long trestle tables formed the main part of the room, and across from the door was a raised stage with a fine old-fashioned dinner suite on top of it, loaded with food - roast chicken, potatoes, bread, vegetables, bacon, rice and peas - whereas the children sitting on their hard benches below had not yet been served. A large woman wearing ripped jeans and a ruffled red shirt with long, puffy sleeves was talking and joking with the children, leaning against the stage as she did so.

The girls were all on the right sides of the tables, the boys on the left, so the latter saw Seabury and George enter first and stood up immediately, ceasing all their chatter in that same moment. The girls took their cue from this and stood up likewise, although continuing to stare straight ahead until the two men climbed the short set of stairs to the stage and sat down. Well, George sat down at a nod from Seabury, and the bishop remained standing, smiling around at the children as they sat likewise.

"Martha, why don't you serve everyone? Angelica, Susan, help her, please. Aaron, go and get John. His punishment is finished, and in recognition of his good behaviour during it I would like him to read to us before we eat."

A boy with hair cropped close to his skull nodded timidly, stood, bowed, and ran off through a door to the left of the tables. Martha ladled soup into the children's bowls, the eldest sister of Elizabeth and Margaret/Marguerite gave them a piece of bread each from a huge basket that she balanced on her hip, and another girl, very sunburnt with flaming red hair and sharp green eyes, filled up their glasses with water.

It was when Martha finished serving the lunch and turned to go back to what was presumably the orphanage kitchen that George caught sight of her face. All the breath was knocked out of him in an instant. She was beautiful. Her skin was mid-brown, smooth and even, with a delicate flush to it reminiscent of ripe fruit. Her hair was black, coiled up on her head in a simple yet elegant style. And her eyes... her eyes. They were like pools of amber, pure, sparkling jewels, flecked with gold sparks that caught the light as she looked up - at him? He hardly dared to hope. She wasn't smiling, but he could imagine her smile. It would be bright and wide, full of the happiness that he had heard in her laugh earlier.

"That's enough, Martha," said Seabury sharply, and she rolled her beautiful eyes and trudged back into the kitchen. Almost at the same moment a freckled boy with a large rip in his regulation khaki shirt was brought in by the kid called Aaron.

"Ah, John. Feeling penitent?"

John hesitated, then nodded, looking almost as if he were about to cry.

"Good boy," Seabury said smugly. "Don't worry - all is most assuredly forgiven. In fact I have a special treat for you. How would you like to read from the Bible to us before lunch?"

The boy bit his lip and answered in the affirmative, adding "sir" as an afterthought.

"Excellent. Come on up, then."

John climbed the stairs as the condemned man climbs up to the scaffold, wearily yet still with a slight touch of fear tinting his movements. Fear, thought George, at the unknown. He wondered what this boy had done wrong. Perhaps he had talked in French once too often. He imagined it wouldn't take much to piss off Seabury. 

"Leviticus 20:13, I think." Seabury smiled at John as he handed the boy a well-worn Bible, but it was a mean smile. "Just the one verse."

John flipped through the first few books of the Old Testament until he came to the right page. Immediately George could see he was a poor reader. He frowned at the tiny writing, stabbing at the words with his finger, and muttered under his breath. At last he found verse 13, and began to read: slowly, haltingly. "If a man also... lies with man-k-ind as he li-eth with a wom... woman, both of th-em have c... c... com..."

"Committed," prompted Seabury, his eyes narrowed. "Keep going, boy."

"Committed an ab-om-i-n-a-ti-on, abomination..." John's eyes filled with tears and he slammed the book shut, reciting very fast, "If a man also lies with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

And he dropped the Bible and ran down to his table, where he hid his head in his arms as his shoulders shook with sobs.

Seabury looked even smugger than before as he announced, "You may begin."

George waited until the room was filled with chatter again before he turned to Seabury and pointed his finger at the bishop. "Now, listen here, man. I don't want to insult anyone's religion, but regardless of what you believe, that was victimisation and I'm not going to stand for it!"

"Oh, but dear little John is a repeat offender!" Seabury protested. "Normal punishments just don't seem to work with that boy."

George was furious. "You should not be punishing a child for an attraction to the same gender which he can't help!" He was talking too loud now, and he knew it was one of the first laws of teaching not to let the kids know of disagreements between staff, but he was too mad to care.

"He can choose to live on the straight and narrow," Seabury nearly shouted back, "but he is too lazy and counter-authoritative! And you will support me on these matters or you will find yourself without a job, Mr. Washington!"

Washington opened his mouth to reply, but then realised three things: 1. Without this job he would be destitute on the poorest island in the West Indies with no way of getting home, 2. He could not morally stand to leave these poor children alone with Seabury again, and 3. Every one of them was now silent and hanging on the two adults' every word, even tear-streaked John.

So he swallowed his pride and bit out, "Very well."

As the children resumed talking, Seabury nodded, satisfied. "I'm glad you agree, George. May I call you George? Oh, good."

 


	2. La Resistance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The children's English and French names:  
> Alexander = Aléxandre  
> John = Jean  
> Hercules = Hercule  
> Gilbert = Lafayette  
> Angelica = Angélique  
> Elizabeth = Elise  
> Margaret = Marguerite  
> Thomas = Thomás (yes, I know this is the Spanish version haha)  
> James = Jacques  
> Maria = Marine  
> Aaron = Aaron (boring name for a boring person, no offence A. Burr)  
> Theodosia = Théodosie  
> Dolly = Dominique  
> Sally = Salomé  
> Pretty sure that's everyone although the last two won't feature much if at all.

After lunch, and a prayer of thanks which was said by a petite girl in her early teens who Seabury called 'Maria', the children were shepherded into the second largest room of the ground floor of the orphanage.

"This is the classroom," the bishop told George cheerfully enough considering their recent spat. "Five to sevens sit in front, then eight to tens, then eleven to thirteens, and the back row is fourteen to sixteens."

"What about the younger children?" George asked, having seen no one younger than little Margaret.

"There's a separate building for them on the south tip of the island," Seabury said carelessly. "It's not my jurisdiction. If I'd wanted to work with screaming infants I would have gone into politics!" He laughed very loudly and gestured at the children to take their seats. Well, they didn't really have seats. They just sat on the bare-boarded floor in neat rows of about twenty, with ten in the back row. It seemed most children chose to leave the orphanage immediately they turned sixteen. George couldn't _imagine_ why.

Yes, there they were all sitting, again in total silence, facing a large blackboard that was the only ornament in the room apart from an expensive-looking oak desk and chair in the corner, where Seabury now placed his Bible. "Sit here," he commanded George, "and I'll take this afternoon's reading lesson. Then you can take arithmetic - I've a meeting in town. How does that sound?"

"Okay, I suppose, but where are the books?" George asked, settling into the oak seat, which was really quite comfortable.

Seabury shook his head. "No books, my good man. This -" and he gave the Bible a light tap - "is the only book we need."

He stepped up to the blackboard and rapidly chalked a sentence in curling, looping handwriting. "Who will try this? Sally?"

Sally was a pretty mixed-race girl sitting cross-legged in the fourteen to sixteen row, next to Angelica, the eldest sister of Elizabeth and Margaret. She nodded, gave a short gasp of breath, and rushed through it: "Do not wi- with- withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in thy power to act."

"Excellent," said Seabury approvingly. "And who recognises where it is from?"

Alex stuck his hand up. So did one of the other boys in his row, the one with the simply enormous hair. They glared at each other.

"Yes - Thomas?"

Alex sighed and put his hand down, dejected. Thomas gave a delighted grin and sang out, "Proverbs, chapter three, verse twenty-seven!"

"Indeed. You may have the honour of writing next," Seabury beamed back. Thomas jumped up and tiptoed past four other boys in his row - Aaron of the shaved head and nervous disposition, John who had been upset by the bishop earlier, and two boys with very dark skin and hair who would have looked similar if it were not for their enormous difference in height. Also, the taller one wore a beanie-style hat knitted from the same khaki wool as their shorts. That small act of rebellion made George smile, and then abruptly frown as Thomas half-skipped up to the board and proceeded to write... the exact same sentence in the same sprawling cursive.

"Very good, Thomas, sit back down." Seabury surveyed the children. "Theodosia?"

"Do not with-withhold good from thothe to whom it ith due when it ith in thy power to act," a girl with a rather scruffy head of cornrows lisped. She didn't even look at the board. She wasn't reading at all, George realised. She was repeating what Sally had said, word for word, mistake for mistake.

"And where is it from?"

More hands went up now.

"Charles."

"Proverbs chapter three verse twenty-seven."

"Correct. Come on up."

Up went Charles and wrote - you guessed it - the same sentence.

Eleanor, Susan, Elizabeth, Harriet, Jane, Beatrice and Virginia 'read' the sentence over the course of the next half an hour; Leonard, Phillip, Julian, Lewis, Hercules, Peter and Aaron wrote on the board. At last George stuck up his hand.

"Mr. Washington. You have a query?" Seabury asked witheringly.

Washington made a conscious effort to sound pleasant. "Actually, yes. Is this the only thing you teach?"

Seabury laughed again. "Oh, goodness no! Aaron!"

Aaron stopped in his tracks, chalk still clutched in one sticky hand. His eyes went big and George could swear he was shaking a little. "Y-yes, _Monsigneur_? Uh, uh, I mean, Mr. Seabury, my lord, sir?"

"What were the verses we learnt yesterday?"

"Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh; for the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being ensnared," Aaron gabbled. "Proverbs chapter three verses twenty-five to twenty-six."

Seabury patted the boy on his shaved head in an absent-minded way. "Good. Sit back down. Do you see, George?"

George saw. "I see," he said with raised eyebrows, "a scripture lesson, not a reading one. The Bible has its time and place, but so does learning to foster one's literacy skills in an appropriate way."

"Nonsense," the bishop said angrily. "This is the way I have always taught reading, and there have been no complaints to date! Besides, I believe I am much more qualified than you to decide the time and place for the Scriptures."

George supposed this last was probably true, so nodded even though he didn't agree with literally anything else the bishop had just said.

Seabury looked a little more pleased, and rubbed his hands together briskly. "The reading lesson is over now anyway, and you can teach them arithmetic in any heathen manner you choose, but don't get your hopes up - they're fairly dull. Good day to you."

He swept out of the room, and George was left with a class full of bored, fidgeting, apathetic children and a piece of chalk.

 _Great_.

"Okay, so," he began, tossing the chalk from hand to hand as he thought, "can anyone tell me what you learnt yesterday in arithmetic?"

Someone's hand was put up at the back.

"Yes - Angelica, isn't it?"

"Six times ten is sixty," the girl recited, fiddling with a curl.

"And the day before?"

"Five times ten is fifty."

"And what did you expect to learn today, I wonder?"

Angelica shrugged with a small sigh. "Seven times ten, I guess."

"Well... Ah, _c'est inutile_."

He had said something in French - it was as if he'd electrified the entire room. Heads shot up left, right and centre. George was thrilled. He'd gotten through to them! He really had! He had to seize this chance right away.

 _"Angélique, we are going to learn seven times ten today,"_ he told her (although he was really speaking to the room) in rapid French. _"We're also going to learn eight times ten and fifteen times ten and a hundred times ten, because I'm going to teach you this one cool trick for multiplying by ten that is going to blow your minds. And if I can trust you all to keep a secret, I can teach you in French which I bet will help you understand it a lot more. Sound good?"_

The children all nodded, little pockets of whispering breaking out here and there.

 _"But you can't tell_ Monsigneur _, okay?"_

 _"We sure won't!"_ snorted the boy with the beanie. _"What do you take us for, snitches?"_

There was general laughter, but still everyone was engaged, everyone was listening. George had never had a more attentive class.

 _"Get on your feet, then, everyone. Come on! I want you to have learnt your ten times tables all the way up to infinity by the time_ Monsigneur _returns!"_

When Seabury did return, it was quite a few hours later. The children knew their ten times tables up to infinity, the rest of Proverbs chapter three, the capital cities and principal imports of every sovereign nation in the Caribbean, the rules of three separate variations of tag in the overgrown desert of a garden behind the orphanage, and different ways to analyse a famous French poem that Washington had written on the blackboard. They were having more fun than most of them had had in their whole lives. You see, George would never admit it, but he really was a wonderful teacher, especially for the younger ones. He sang songs, he talked gibberish, he pulled faces, he said (very mild) rude words to shock them out of their daydreams, he was patient with the slow ones and challenged the clever ones simultaneously, and all this in a class of seventy. He hoped that he had taught them their lessons in a fun and stimulating way, and given them enough time to let off steam in between times. He didn't know that he had won their passionate allegiance.

(As for John who had been so cruelly treated at lunchtime, Washington took him aside during tag and gave him a fatherly sort of talk about how he really wasn't at fault, and that Seabury should have been more respectful. He avoided mentioning specifics as of yet, as he really didn't know the boy well enough to make a more precise judgement. And besides, John was obviously unwilling to set the ball rolling. Sexuality, as George well knew from years of teaching, was a thorny issue at the best of times and at the worst... well, he'd rather not think about it, and neither, clearly, would John.)

Seabury came into the room in much the same way he had gone out of it, except a tiny bit the worse for drink. His shrewd eyes swept over the classroom. The children were sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the floor, angelic expressions on their little faces, and '10 x 7 = ?' was written on the board, all traces of French poetry having been rubbed off it at the word from one of the kids put on lookout duty. "Washington, what are you doing?" he snapped. "Given how long I've been gone, I should jolly well hope they know ten multiplied by seven now!"

"Yes, Seabury, and a whole lot more besides -" George began, but he was cut off.

"I don't care about anything else. They were supposed to learn that." He pointed dramatically at the board with one billowing black sleeve. "Have they or have they not?"

"Margaret?" George asked with a small smile.

"Ten times seven is _seventy_ ," declaimed the youngest of the three sisters, and Angelica leant forward to high-five Elizabeth.

Seabury stopped short, staring at Margaret with something like shock. That emotion was, however, quickly replaced with his usual smug, semi-paternal expression. "Er - well done, Margaret. I hope you'll remember your number in future! Now march into the dining hall, all of you, while I have a word with Mr. Washington."

To say Seabury 'had a word' with him was an understatement. The bishop was clearly in a bad temper, and had decided to take it out on George. The latter bit his tongue and stayed silent, trying to make himself feel only relief that the children weren't being punished... although they had played their parts so well that they really had nothing to be punished for. Seabury displayed his temper again during dinner in a number of ways: for one, he purposefully chose little Theodosia to read from the Bible before they ate even though she could barely hold the heavy book, much less read it coherently, and her heavy lisp was a great impediment; for another, he called up Martha and chewed her out about putting rice and peas on the masters' table for the second time that day, calling it 'bloody foreign food' in front of a room full of Caribbean children; and for a third thing, he made Dolly say the prayer afterwards, a girl with a pronounced stammer. It took her about five minutes in total to get through a child's couplet that should have only taken ten seconds. The kids, being kids, couldn't help but giggle, but George's heart went out to the girl. There were no speech therapists on the island of Saint-Denis.

All in all, George was very happy to get to bed and away from Seabury.

His room was tiny, more of a cupboard really, although from a peek he had taken into the boys' dormitory, he at least had more space than they did. And a mosquito net. The boys had none. He really had to write to the charity that sponsored the orphanage about that. The bishop freely admitted that malaria outbreaks were frequent, and that he himself had suffered from the disease more than once, but they had medicine that dealt with the symptoms. George felt like banging his head against the wall. Why waste the charity's resources on expensive medicine when they could just deal with the source of the problem by protecting the children against mosquitoes?

George's room had no windows, but at least three walls were board. The other was flimsy tarpaulin that separated him from the main storage room, in which were kept food provisions, first aid supplies, countless bottles and tanks of clean water and boxes of candles for when the utilities inevitably failed, and most of the orphanage's linen such as towels and blankets. Not that the latter were needed, George reflected as he lay sweating like a pig on top of the scratchiest sheet he had ever had the misfortune to be given. It was as hot as all hell. It was as hot as... well, was there any place on Earth hotter than the West Indies in summer? If there was, George certainly hadn't been there. He shut his eyes, groaned, and tried to sleep...

And was promptly awoken by the pitter-patter of tiny feet.

 _"Ssh!" "Tais-toi!" "Non, tais-TOI!" "Tu vas alerter t_ _out le monde!" "Ferme-la, bâtard créole!" "Thomás, faire attention à ta bouche!"_

Someone bumped into something and swore dreadfully. This gave rise, as George had expected it would, to exaggerated gasps and prophesies of eternal damnation for the unlucky speaker - but still all in a kind of theatrical stage whisper that he could hear very clearly, and thought everyone else in the fairly small, flimsy building could probably hear too.

 _"Alright,"_ said a girl in a businesslike way, and still in French. _"Is this meeting of La Résistance called to order?”_

 _"Oui,"_ said ten or so voices.

 _"But,"_ added a boy, _"we're called Les Federalistes."_

The room exploded with whisper-shouts of protest. _"What!" "No!"_

 _"Yeah, Aléxandre,"_ said another kid; trying to show his superiority, George decided. _"Everyone knows we're Les Democratique-Républicains."_

Again there was a muffled ten-second riot, until the original girl (it had to be Angelica) quelled it with what sounded like her taking the two boys who had spoken by the scruffs of their necks and banging their heads together. _"Shut up, all of you! We're La Résistance or we're nothing. And if you keep fighting we'll also end up doing nothing. Now, first on the agenda!"_

 _"New memberth,"_ piped up lisping Theodosia. _"I propothe Aaron."_

 _"Thank you, Théodosie, but we've already voted against Aaron many times,"_ Angelica answered kindly.

 _"Yeah,"_ put in Alex. _"The goody-two-shoes. Did you see how he sucked up to Seabury this afternoon?_ 'Ooh, _Monsigneur_ , my lord, sir!'" he imitated the boy cruelly, prompting giggles from the whole room.

 _"That was unkind, Aléx,"_ said a softer, warmer girl's voice. _"Aaron is afraid because of his father."_

 _"Not that you would know anything about fathers, huh, bastard?"_ jibed the other boy who had already spoken, who George had decided was probably Thomas. But this time Angelica stopped any fighting before it began.

_"Shut your mouth, Thomás, or I'll vote you out so fast you won't have time to blink! Any other new members?"_

_"I propose Georges,"_ said a voice unexpectedly.

 _"Jean?"_ Alex asked. _"I can't see you because of the dark. Who's Georges?"_

_"Monsieur Georges Washington, of course. He's great. He'd never tell."_

George nearly fell out of his narrow bed. John, the little freckled boy who he had tried to comfort earlier, trusted him enough to say that?

Obviously, however, the other children didn't, as there was a storm of muttering. _"I don't like him,"_ said a deep voice unexpectedly. _"He's... too nice. Remember Reynolds?"_

 _"We all remember Monsieur Reynolds, Hercule,"_ shuddered Maria. She sounded honestly frightened. _"Monsieur George is nothing like that!"_

 _"I don't agree,"_ said another child - whether boy, or girl, George couldn't decide. _"Both seemed so nice at first. And I bet that M'sieur George will end up just like him. 'Spare the rod and spoil the child'..."_

 _"Seabury actually thought that was from the Bible for like five months,"_ Alex sniggered. _"Idiot!"_

There was some laughter, but most of the children seemed to have sobered at the mention of this Mr. Reynolds.

 _"Let's vote on it,"_ said another boy at last, coughing slightly – it must be James, who George had noticed never let go of his handkerchief. _"All in favour of letting Monsieur George Washington into the secret of La Résistance?"_

 _"Oui,"_ said John stoutly. He was the only one.

_"All against?"_

_"Non,"_ said everyone else: some straight away, like Hercule, or Hercules, as Seabury had called him; some rather more reluctantly, like Margaret and Maria.

 _"That's decided, then,"_ said Angelica briskly, clapping her hands together in place of a gavel. _"Our next item for discussion?"_

 _"Seabury,"_ growled Alex, his voice full of hate. _"I'll start."_

 _"Wait your turn,"_ Elizabeth chided him gently. _"Youngest first. What have you got, Peggy?"_

Peggy was apparently Margaret, who thought for a second and then said in her thin little voice, _"You all know what happened this noon when I forgot my number. If Monsieur George hadn't been there_ Monsigneur _would have punished me for sure. Probably no supper."_

 _"But he didn't,"_ John reminded her.

 _"Oh, do be quiet, Jean,"_ Thomas sighed. _"Théodosie?"_

_"Thith evening he made me read aloud, and it wath a really hard one, and then he laughed when I couldn't thay Methuth - Methuthel -"_

_"Methuselah,"_ Angelica provided. _"That certainly wasn’t kind, dear. Who's next?"_

And they went on like that, each child telling the others about something Seabury had done to upset them, from yelling because their 'tone was impertinent', to taking away their breakfast because they dropped their knife, to pulling Maria's plait hard when she sassed him, to calling Alex stupid for saying that Great Britain was a large island near Jamaica -

 _"And he misgendered me five times on purpose to try and make me mad so he could punish me for shouting,"_ said the child who had brought up Mr. Reynolds, whose name, apparently, was Lafayette. _"But I didn't get mad, no, sir, not a bit!"_

 _"You did very well, Laf,"_ Angelica praised them.

 _"Merci, Angélique, but I know my brother has something to tell,"_ they said politely.

 _"You're damn right I do,"_ Thomas snapped.

Alex laughed. _"Oh, yeah? You didn't sound so angry when you answered in class! You're as bad as Aaron._ 'Proverbs, chapter three, verse twenty-seven!'"

There was a grunt, a crash, a muffled yell, and then the unmistakeable sounds of two young boys fighting hell for leather. George at first thought Angelica would sort it out, but she didn't (and who could blame her for keeping well away?) and so, as much as he hated having to break up their little secret society meeting, he determined to stop the fight.

His robe and slippers on although the weather was far too hot, he ran down the narrow hallway at a sprint and crashed through the door of the storage room. The sudden sound shocked the boys enough that they ceased, as he had expected. But he still had to make sure they didn't start again.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked not unkindly.

"Mr. Washington!" gasped the three sisters in canon, holding onto each other so tightly that George couldn't tell where Angelica ended and Eliza began, and Peggy was just a couple of arms and a pale, pinched, frightened face.

"Mr. Washington," said Alex fearfully, jumping up as did Thomas. "We were not doing anything."

"Idiot!" Thomas hissed at him.

"You started it," Alex shot back.

"We're all going to get punished now," observed Hercules matter-of-factly.

And so, semi-ghostly in their white cotton pyjamas, they waited in a huddled little group between a bumper box of vegetable stock and a barrel of apples for George to pronounce their sentence.

But he couldn't. And he didn't.

"No one," he said, choosing his words carefully, "is going to get punished _if_  you get back to bed right away. Sound fair?"

The children didn't answer. They just ran. Well, most of them - Alex trailed behind, his face frozen, his arms hugging himself. George sighed and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Son -"

"Don't call me 'son'!" Alex shrieked at him, wrenching his shoulder away and fleeing into the dormitory.

Well, that went well, thought George wryly, and prepared himself for another few hours of tossing and turning in 100° heat.

It was going to be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would really like to know  
> What you think of this, and so  
> If it isn't too much bother  
> Leave a comment for the author!


	3. La Coiffeuse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Maria talks about her experiences with M. Reynolds. Basically he called her an unfortunately perjorative name more appropriate to an adult than a child, and smacked her. Nothing sexual or I would have tagged it, but better safe than sorry amirite?

The next morning George was again rather rudely awoken, this time by a banging on his door. Sticky-eyed and drowsy, he stumbled out of bed and managed to remember to throw his robe on before sliding open the flimsy wooden partition.

Outside stood an angel.

George rubbed his eyes, remembered he was nearsighted, and put on his glasses. The holy image rapidly refocused to become Martha in a white blouse with an apron of the same colour over her jeans.

"Ah," he muttered, "not an angel, but a goddess."

"I beg your pardon?" the goddess asked coolly.

"Er, never mind."

She raised her eyebrows at him (they were perfect, Good God, everything about her was perfect) and slowly said "Ooh...kay? Well, anyway, His Nibs sent me to tell you breakfast is served. It's porridge."

"Sounds delicious!" George smiled cheesily.

"It won't sound so delicious after a few months of nothing but porridge. The budget won't stretch to anything more, apparently. Well, I sometimes get a Lemsip from the mini-mart in the village for that James boy. Poor kid."

"Oh yes," agreed George devoutly. "Poor, poor thing."

Martha smiled suddenly. "You're an odd one, aren't you? I'll leave you to get some proper clothes on. Oh, and one more thing - you're teaching trades this morning."

"Excellent!" George said rather foolishly, and waved at her back as she went sashaying back down the rickety set of stairs. She walked so elegantly, he thought with a rush of embarrassment; he himself had always been a tall man, which didn't really bode well for his grace of movement. But it was no matter. He was probably already late for breakfast, and it was a sure bet that wouldn't sit well with Seabury.

Throwing on the first shirt and pair of trousers he could find, he grabbed a tie from the neatly folded pile on top of his case and knotted it while running down to the dining hall. On the way he nearly tripped over several stray flaps of tarpaulin, but he figured he had neither the time nor the expertise to fix them where they were meant to go, and instead diverted his clumsy feet through the door into the hall.

There he was met with a rather odd picture. The Most Reverend Samuel Seabury was sitting on the stage with the word 'sorry' coming out of his mouth.

George rubbed his ears well and wondered if he had turned deaf as well as blind in the middle of the night.

"I believe an apology is owed to you, Theodosia," the bishop was saying pompously. "Last evening, the extract I gave you to begin our meal with was far too difficult for one such as you. For that, I am sorry. Perhaps you would like to try again." And he handed the Bible to the young girl. "The Book of St. John, I believe would be appropriate; chapter eleven, verse thirty-five."

Theo with difficulty took the enormous book, and, laying it upon the table and turning to the correct book and chapter, she ran her finger down the pages slowly until she came to verse thirty-five.

"Eleven, thirty-five?" she asked the bishop timidly. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely," smiled Seabury with every appearance of total innocence.

The young girl's face worked, and she muttered something.

"Well, turn to face everyone, and speak up!" Seabury chided her.

Theodosia picked up the Bible and held it over the flats of her arms. She gripped the tops of its gilt-edged faces with her fingers, checked the verse one more time, raised her large, tragic eyes to the ceiling and intoned, "Jethuth wept."

And amidst the laughter of her sixty-nine fellow children, she unconsciously imitated John by shoving the Bible hard into Seabury's lap and sprinting down the steps to her table, tears and plaits flying everywhere. The laughter only subsided when she dropped onto the spare stretch of bench next to Aaron (nobody wanted to sit next to that kid, George noticed) and hid her face in his shoulder. Embarrassed, the boy patted her back and whispered something to her that sounded like _"Théo, don't take on like that. Be strong; hold your head up high."_ He was speaking in French, but as the laughter of the other kids continued, nobody seemed to notice.

"Alright, that's enough," called George, suddenly angry no longer so much at Seabury, but at the orphans. "Be quiet! The Lord taught us to be kind to our fellow man, didn't he, _Mr_. Seabury?"

"Er - that is correct, Mr. Washington," said the bishop rather uncomfortably as the room quietened down. "Let us eat. Sally, Thomas, you can serve everyone. Martha, come up here, won't you, dear?"

They obeyed him, Martha with a threatening scowl. "If it's about the rice and peas again," she began, her accent heavy with anger, "I think we've all heard enough about that, don't you think, Mr. Washington?"

George couldn't help but nod. Besides, he really did enjoy rice and peas. Just maybe not for _every_ meal.

"No, it's not that. All has been forgiven. Rather, the small matter of the children's hair," the bishop explained. "It's getting... well, just look at Thomas and you'll see what I mean. Also, most of the girls need their little plaits doing again, what are they called, sorry?"

"Cornrows," Martha stated, rolling her eyes. "I suppose you want the boys cornrowing as well?"

Seabury looked at her askance. "Martha! Absolutely not! The parents of the village lads may allow them to keep decent company with those awful matted dreadlocks down to their backs, but I hold my orphans to a higher standard. No, just shave it all off. You can do it in the scullery if you cart the mirror down from my bedroom. And the equipment is in the storage room in the box labeled -"

"The box labeled 'hair supplies', yes, I know." Martha gazed at Seabury's own balding head, her face thoughtful. "So basically, cornrows for the girls."

"Within reason, yes. I see no reason for you to do the same to Susan or Dolly's hair, for instance. Just trim the ends. Oh, and just in case give them all a good once-over with the, er..." and here the bishop leant in close and whispered, "nit comb."

Martha grinned and saluted. "Will do, boss!" And she descended from the stage with every appearance of being totally focused on her task. But as she passed the table on which the members of La Resistance sat, George saw her briefly press Theo's shoulder and lean in to whisper something that cheered the little girl up considerably.

George was infatuated with that woman. Just... everything about her. Her voice, her actions, the way she dressed, the way she walked, her capable manner, her kindness towards the children and the way she dared to speak to the bishop so familiarly whilst at the same time keeping a veneer of professionalism over her words - the words were the main thing - they delighted and distracted him, every one. She was a terrible cook though, he mused as he forced down a spoonful of almost inedibly viscous oatmeal. Still. What did that matter, when literally everything else she did was perfect?

He shook his head and forced himself to listen to what Seabury was saying. The droning voice gradually filtered in to his consciousness: "...and the usual way we get around that is that one of the older girls cooks for the duration, it'll probably be Angelica these few days. Good practice for her."

"Hmm?" asked George vaguely, watching Martha bustle to and fro with empty plates and glasses. "Practice?"

"Oh, yes. Most of our graduates end up as hotel staff or waitresses on one of the more tourist-ish islands nearby. There aren't really any job opportunities on Saint-Denis except manual labour, and, well, for obvious reasons they only want boys. However - and this is strictly between us, old boy -"

George rather abruptly found himself the subject of what appeared to be a great confidence of the bishop's. He cleared his throat and put his most serious face on. "Absolutely. Not a word."

"- I'm rather planning to keep Angelica here when she turns sixteen," Seabury said quietly. "She's so good with the younger ones and Martha has needed an assistant ever since our numbers were raised to seventy from only fifty. I would prefer Elizabeth for tractability, but the poor girl just can't keep order, and that's what you really need, isn't it?"

George found that he was expected to give an answer. He thought for half a second and then nodded reluctantly. "I suppose, but -"

"Not some sickly-sweet do-gooder who preaches love and tolerance," said the bishop pointedly.

"I understand completely where you're coming from, but -"

"Who encourages vices of the worst kind: sloth, rebellion, hedonism, _libertinism_..."

"Seabury," broke in George impatiently, "have you _asked_ Angelica what she thinks about your little plan?"

Seabury struck the table with his fist, causing his porridge bowl to rock dangerously and nearly tip over, and many of the children seated on the nearest trestle table to jump and stare at the two masters arguing over their meal. "See, George, this is exactly what I mean! It is not her decision, it is mine, as her guardian and the headmaster here! Need I remind you that I, as you Americans so eloquently put it, call the shots?"

George shut his eyes with a groan and counted to ten as his father had taught him forty years ago, when he was just a war-obsessed little boy with an anger management problem. Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf... And back again. Dix, neuf, huit, sept, six, cinq, quatre, trois, deux.

When he opened them again, he no longer felt so strong an urge to punch Seabury's glowering face. "You're right, of course, Samuel," he said evenly. "May I call you Samuel?"

The bishop looked confused for a second, as if he had expected a stair where there wasn't one and put his foot down too hard. Then his face cleared and he smiled amicably at George. "Why, certainly."

"Then, Samuel, I believe breakfast has finished. Perhaps I could give a reading? Some food for thought?"

Seabury nodded, so George stood and cleared his throat to get the children's attention. "A reading from the book of St. Luke," he began, "chapter six, verses twenty-seven to twenty-eight and thirty-one. 'But I say unto you which hear: love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.'"

The children stared at him. It was very likely that they had never heard those verses before. From what George had gathered, Seabury restricted their knowledge of the Scriptures to genealogical history (X is the son of Y, the son of Z etc.), proverbs, psalms and such commandments as the bishop found to be in keeping with his own ideology. Oh, and of course, 'Jesus wept'. But George thought he could pretty safely take that as an outlier.

"How... sweet," Seabury finally broke the silence, directing his cold gaze first at George and then at the kids. "Off you go to the classroom, now. Martha will be taking you out one by one to have your hair brushed and cut."

There was stifled groaning as they all got up with a screeching of benches over scratched wood and filed into the classroom. Obviously this was not going to be a good day for the orphans, and George could understand their point of view - with seventy children to get through and only one nit comb Martha could hardly be blamed for cutting corners here and there.

The 'trades' lesson he was supposed to teach this morning, as the bishop explained, would help prepare the children for their future careers. But when George looked at the box of supplies he had been given he really couldn't see how the lesson was going to work.

Scrubbing brushes? Cloths? Dish soap?

Oh.

"Right," he said with an inward sigh. "It looks like this morning we're going to be learning how to wash dishes."

There was a scattered, sarcastic cheer from the children.

Someone stuck their hand up in the second row. "But, sir, we already learnt that yesterday," complained a small girl with long, shiny blonde hair down to her waist. It would be a shame to see that cut, thought George. Still, there was always the problem of nits.

"You already learnt it? Hands up if you washed dishes yesterday morning."

Every hand in the room went up. Every girls' hand, that was.

"Er. Right. What did the boys do?"

"Weeded the garden," said Thomas, not bothering to put his hand up. "Basically, this 'trades' business is just _them_ getting us to do chores. But Martha helped the girls, and _Monsigneur_ didn't help us boys."

He looked really indignant at this, but Laf was laughing next to him. "Fat chance," they chuckled. "Imagine  _Monsigneur_ doing work... all he does is sleep in his office all morning."

Just then Sally came into the room, her curls cropped to shoulder-length and put into fresh plaits. "Two," she said and sat down with a bump.

Charles got up, stuck his tongue out at her and stalked out, slamming the door behind him.

 _"You lot really don't like getting your hair done, do you?"_ sighed George, slipping into French half-unconsciously. And just like yesterday, as soon as he started speaking their language the children perked up.

 _"Nope!"_ called William from the back of the room. _"Marthe's awful! She nicks your ears and makes it all uneven."_

 _"That's not fair to Marthe,"_ James said into his handkerchief, which he was treating more like a comfort blanket the more stressed he got. _"She's nice."_

 _"Only 'cos you fancy her,"_ William jeered back.

James' eyes widened and he coughed even harder. _"Shut up!"_

 _"Guillaume! Jacques!"_ George said sharply. _"I don't want to interrupt your conversation, fascinating though it may be, but we have to think of something to do that doesn't involve repeating the same lesson from yesterday."_

 _"And the day before,"_ put in Angelica with a roll of the eyes. _"Poor Marthe! Fancy washing dishes for seventy kids to make a living!"_

But that's exactly what Seabury wants you to do, George wanted to say, but didn't. He still had hopes of changing the man's mind, after all. Instead he snapped his fingers. _"I've got an idea. How about a botany lesson? I'll take you out and teach you all about the different plants, and we can do a bit of weeding as well. Yes, Susan, the girls as well as the boys,"_ as the latter looked mutinous. _"Don't worry. It won't be too hard with seventy-one of us working at it. Let's go!"_

So, broad-brimmed straw hats firmly on heads, the seventy kids of Seabury's orphanage trailed outside into the garden. Well... garden was a pretty strong word for that place. It was more like a desert. A desert crossed with a wild rainforest, never before seen by human eyes. There were plants literally everywhere; in the game of tag yesterday the children had disregarded this important fact completely and trampled all over spiky alavis, delicate red chaconia blossoms and strong-smelling marimanpoke leaves (commonly known as basil) alike. Weeds grew everywhere in the sand and dirt. George thought he knew why - if it was really true that Seabury slept all morning instead of supervising the boys, it made perfect sense that they would goof off instead of working. Still, even though the place was overrun with plants of the right and wrong kind, it was actually kind of pretty. Palm trees arched overhead, shading the children below and dappling the soil with geometric patterns of light. Tall vines covered with purple flowers snaked over the towering wall of the orphanage. Yes, decided George. He could work with this place.

He opened his mouth to start the lesson, but before he could, Charles ran through the door and bent over, panting. Blood was dripping from a tiny cut on his ear and his formerly thick black locks had been cropped until nothing remained of them but a light layer of stubble.

"Ow-ow-ow," he gasped as soon as he had his breath. "She's half killed me!"

 _"En français,"_ prompted George gently, shooing away the group of interested children that surrounded the teen.

"Shut up!" Charles yelled at him, straightening up and holding his ear. "You won't change anything by being so nice. The best thing you could do for this orphanage is turn and go back to planting tobacco in Barbados!"

George flushed and took a step back. "Calm down, son. I understand you're upset, but that's no reason to shout. Do you need a plaster?"

"I'll get it myself," the boy growled, and left. George shut his eyes briefly, then went on to act like nothing had happened, instead telling the kids about 'Petrea Volubilis', or queen's wreath.

 _"Someone ought to hold Charles to those words,"_ John whispered to Alex as Thomas wrapped protective arms around his own voluminous hair and sank onto a rotted wooden bench.

 _"Monsieur George said this morning to do unto others as we would like to be done to,"_ the other boy whispered back, glancing at the teacher as he explained how climbing vines needed to be pruned in the spring so they could grow back stronger.

 _"I should hope someone would sit on me good and hard if I said something like that,"_ John argued _. "Besides, you don't have to do anything. I'll take care of him."_ And he balled his freckle-covered, work-roughened hands into fists and glared at the door.

Alex looked around, then sighed. _"Fine. But we're gonna get in big trouble, you know that, right?"_

John shrugged and his face softened into a toothy grin. _"It'll be worth it. Promise."_ And he pecked a very surprised and mortified Alex on the cheek. _"C'mon. Let's do this."_

Engaged as he was with expounding the virtues of perennial over annual varieties of plant, George didn't even noticed that two boys slipped back into the building behind Susan (number three) who was with trepidation heading off to get her hair cut.

 _"And so you don't have to plant new seeds each year, they just grow by themselves,"_ he was saying. _"Now who can name me a plant like that?"_

Maria wiggled through the group to the front, her arm stuck straight up in the air. "Hibiscus!" she called happily.

 _"Yes, that's right... Marine!_ What have you done to your jumper?" George scolded her in English. He wasn't joking - there was a huge rip down the front of it.

The girl glanced down, shocked. "Oh no! My pinny! Mr. Washington, I'm so sorry. I did not mean to!"

"I know. Cheer up. We'll get you a new one," George said, chucking the girl under the chin gently. _"Angélique, can you take over? Tell the class about your favourite plant."_

Angelica willingly did so while George led Maria indoors. When he looked back at her, though, she was silently weeping.

 _"Oh, no, kiddo, what's wrong?"_ He crouched down to her level - she might have been thirteen, but like Alex, she was as small as a ten-year-old. _"Look at me. Take a deep breath. Then tell me why you're sad."_

She did so, although it was clearly difficult for her to meet his eyes. When she did, however, she started crying in earnest. _"Monsieur Washington,"_ she sobbed, _"am I a_ harlot?"

George went cold. _"A - a what? No! NO! Where did you hear that word?"_

Maria fiddled with the rip in her pinafore, speaking so softly and crying so hard he could barely hear her. _"When I was little I_ (sob) _used to have to wear a pinny that was too tight and had holes in it, because there wasn't any_ (sob) _spares. And M._ (sob) _Reynolds, who was the master before you came, he thought it was on purpose. And he called me a_ (sob) _a_ harlot _. And he hit me really hard. And whenever he saw me he used to yell because I kept growing and it kept getting smaller and smaller. Eventually Madeline left when she was sixteen and she handed me down this one, but now I_ (sob) _, I, I I've ruined it!"_

George's knees were getting splinters from the uneven wooden floor, but he barely noticed them, he was so full of rage and sympathy. Eventually, fighting back angry tears of his own, he held out his arms. Maria ran into them. _"Listen to me,"_ he said, placing great emphasis on his words. _"You are not a -"_ he could barely bring himself to say the word _"- a_ harlot _. It's not your fault you didn't have clothes that fit, and no one could say it was. Mr. Reynolds was very wrong to treat you that way."_

 _"But what about my pinny?"_ she snuffled into his shoulder.

 _"I promise Marthe will be able to mend it. Just go and see her - tell her I sent you and that she has permission to do it right away, even if she's in the middle of Suzanne's hair or whatever. Okay?"_ And, mindful of propriety and that they were right outside Seabury's office, he stepped back.

Maria looked at him for a long moment, then nodded tearfully and ran off down the corridor. Shaking his head in pity, George stood with a creaking of his knee joints and was about to get back to the garden when he heard a crash from above him.

Not the storage room.

Not again.

 _Goddamnit_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tut, tut, Alex and John. Just hope Seabury doesn't get to you before Washington.


	4. La Confrontation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wild update appears!

It was a calm, serene, beautifully still day on Saint-Denis, and the orphans were milling around the garden, Seabury was snoring as he 'worked' in his office, Susan was nursing a scratch on her neck inflicted by Martha's scissors as she helped a small child by the name of Edward to pick flowers, a girl called Paula (Number Five) was sulking in the corner of the scullery with half of her hair in cornrows and the other half in box braids while Martha sewed up Maria's dress, and George... Well, George was sprinting up the stairs to get to the storage room before someone got killed.

John and Charles, meanwhile, squared up to each other. John was smaller and younger, but he was also faster, and Charles knew that well. So did Alex, and he was confident in his young friend's abilities.

 _"The fight will start on the count of ten,"_ he called from his safe perch on top of a tall crate of bog roll. _"No biting. One, two, three -"_

A figure suddenly flew in and shouted _"Non!"_ But it wasn't George. George had been caught on the stairs by Martha and marched to the scullery to hold Paula down while Martha herself combed and plaited. It was Aaron.

 _"Aaron?"_ said Alex and Charles disbelievingly at the same time. John merely stared, lost for words at the surprising revelation that Aaron could be so... loud.

 _"Fighting is dumb and immature, and you should be ashamed of yourselves,"_ said the boy fiercely. _"Especially Aléx!"_

 _"Why me?"_ protested the boy of that name.

 _"Because you're egging them on, and don't pretend you aren't."_ Aaron gave a firm little nod.

 _"Shut up, baldy, it's none of your business,"_ snapped Charles. _"You're number four anyway - you should be with Marthe getting your hair done. Oh, no, wait. You don't have any hair."_

This was a low blow, and usually Aaron would retreat in tears at this point, but his childish desire to avoid conflict drove him to appear to be made of sterner stuff. _"Yes, that's true,"_ he acquiesced slowly. _"But -"_

Alex interrupted him. _"But nothing! Charles may be mean but he's right, it's not your problem. Now are you going to snitch on us or aren't you?"_

 _"I'm not a snitch!"_ Aaron gulped. _"Fine, if you want to do this, go ahead. I'm not stopping you."_ And he slammed the door behind him, throwing the room into darkness. Well, not quite darkness. Cracks in the wall and around the door let in a few pinpoints of light, but it was dark enough that even Alex began to have second thoughts.

The three boys left in the room were silent for a few moments, then Alex resumed counting a little nervously. _"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!"_

John and Charles turned to face each other on 'ten' and began to wrestle while Alex cheered for his friend. _"You go, Jean!"_

Charles was a good fighter, but he had never trained, having come to the orphanage as a baby (fifteen years ago, just a few weeks after the place was founded, hence his low number) whereas John had only arrived at the age of seven and had received a few amateur self-defence classes from his father before the latter passed away. He was well-used to defending himself from the taunts the other village children used to throw at him for being born off the island. Charles, however, was not. So he had had no means of preparation for the way John dipped down his elbow quite suddenly and pushed him onto the floor, where the latter lay, groaning.

_"What happened? Charles, ça va? Charles?"_

_"Make him cry 'uncle',"_ said Alex unfeelingly.

 _"I think I winded him, Aléx! He can't even speak! Oh, no, what have I done..."_ And John kneeled down beside Charles and began to pat his shoulder over and over again. _"Please, say something..."_

Alex, seeing how upset his friend was, hopped off the box and hugged him. _"It's okay! You didn't even push him that hard. It's just 'cos he landed on his tummy and it pushed all the air out of him. Marthe told me when that happened to Virginie that one time, remember?"_

 _"Yeah, but it really hurt her still,"_ John sniffed. _"Charles, just speak, please, so we know you're not really hurt."_

Charles muttered something - it wasn't a very polite something, but it was something - and both other boys sighed in relief and huddled together in the hot, dark, stifling cupboard of a room.

That was, at least, until they heard footsteps.

 _"Who is it?"_ hissed Charles, picking himself up and abruptly sitting back down again, out of breath. His face was pale and shining in the gloom, whereas Alex and John could barely see each other, and therefore, logically, had to hold hands so they knew where they were. Logically.

 _"It could be Seabury,"_ whispered Alex.

 _"Seabury's sleeping, and anyway he doesn't walk that fast, so it can't be,"_ explained John. _"Maybe it's Aaron again, or Angélique, or Monsieur George."_

 _"Whoever it is I don't want to see them!"_ And Charles, huffing and puffing, wedged himself behind a disused bookshelf. _"Come on, idiots! Hide!"_

Alex and John shared a nervous glance and both tried to fit inside an empty box. It very quickly became obvious that that wasn't going to be possible.

 _"You get in, John,"_ Alex told him.

_"But -"_

_"Just get in! I'll be fine."_ And just as the box's lid fell shut, the door of the storage room was opened once again. Alex got a sudden, frightening feeling of déja vu and stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep from fiddling with them as the figure of George Washington towered over him.

George's thoughts were fairly predictable: something along the lines of 'I swear I heard more than one kid' and 'not this one again!' and 'well, thank goodness they didn't break anything, I suppose'. Eventually he sighed and spoke to the mullish-looking boy. _"Okay, Alexander, tell me - and I want an honest answer - what have you been doing in here?"_

He spoke in French, but Alex answered defiantly in English. "Been crying 'cos I don't have any parents."

"What?!" George spluttered.

Alex took a step back, and repeated, "Been crying 'cos I don't have any parents, _sir_."

George put his head in his hands. The boy had very obviously not been crying, and he knew he'd heard a fight. Had the other kids just ran away and left him here to take the blame? "Son."

"Did I stutter? I got no parents, which means I got no dad, which means I'm notcha son."

"Watch your tone," George warned him. "You know very well that's not what I meant. Now are you going to tell me the truth or am I going to have to take this higher?"

"Oh, you're going to tell on me?" Alex asked, his eyes angry and his chin defiantly jutted out. From inside a box that stank of dried mango and other fruits that weren't as distinct but smelled just as strong, John watched and silently begged Alex to not push his luck. None of them yet knew how mean M. Washington might turn when he got mad.

"I might have to if you keep up this attitude problem," said George calmly. "I know you haven't had the best role models, but whether you consider the grownups around you to be worthy of your respect or not, you should always treat them as such. Do you understand me, son?"

The 'son' slipped out before he could help himself, and he winced and was about to take it back when Alex struck him. Hard. On the leg. Because that was the only place he could reach, probably.

"Call me son one more time!" the boy yelled, and there were two gasps, one from behind the bookshelf, one from inside one of the boxes. George, seething with anger, truly believed that in that moment (if Alex wasn't a child, if he'd hit one of George's scars by accident, if, if, if) he would have struck back. Thank God he didn't, because a blow from one of George's huge paws might have hurt the kid quite badly. And he wasn't angry, not really. Just shocked, and perhaps a little disappointed.

Alex seemed to expect George to retaliate, though, as immediately after his shout he took another hasty step back and lifted up his arms to cover his face.

George just stood there, regulating his breathing and allowing Alex a few seconds to let what he'd done sink in, to put his arms down and wait.

Eventually he did so and George spoke in a voice that was as dreadful as it was measured. "Alexander, go to Bishop Seabury's office right now."

"Yes, sir," said the boy in a tiny voice, and gave George such a consistently wide berth whilst exiting the room that he practically pressed himself against the thin walls.

 _"Now, I don't know if there's anyone else in here,"_ said George in a louder voice (that was a lie - he definitely did) _"but I would strongly advise you to wait a few minutes before coming back into the garden. Eliza is teaching us about how insects carry pollen and I believe..."_

A loud cry came from outside.

 _"Yes, someone has just been stung by a bee. It might be wise to keep your distance."_ And he exited the room, leaving the door open a crack.

It took a few minutes before Charles and John dared to show their faces, but eventually they revealed themselves.

 _"I thought he was going to hit Aléx,"_ sniffed the latter.

 _"It would have served him right if he did,"_ asserted the former.

They stood there, fists up, on the verge of fighting once again - and then Charles stuck out his hand. _"Anyone else would have been way madder, so I suppose Monsieur George isn't so very bad after all,"_ he said grudgingly as John shook it. _"And neither are you. Just don't tell anyone I said that."_

As they walked back down to the garden together, Charles added, _"I still think your friend's an idiot, though."_

John nodded silently. He was rather afraid that Alex was. True, Monsieur George (or Georges, as he liked to think of him) had been fairly good about the whole thing, but once Alex 'fessed up to Seabury John knew the headmaster would be very cross. His friend might have to sleep on the floor or miss all his meals for a day or two days or clean Seabury's office or get whacked with a ruler on his hand, which had only happened to John once but that was enough. It had hurt for ages afterwards. Although - and the boy cheered up when he thought of this - Alex might just have to write lines. Sometimes one of La Résistance acted up on purpose so they would have to write lines, because then they got to sit in Seabury's office while he slept, which provided the perfect opportunity to steal paper and pens. Alex and James especially loved to write, and John liked drawing so much better when it was on clean white paper with clear black lines than when it was in the sand with a stick to impress some of the other kids. His father had kept turtles, and he drew them, over and over again, trying to get their pretty shells and wrinkly little faces right. He didn't draw his dad, though. He couldn't remember what his dad looked like at all.

 _What would Alex have to write?_ John wondered. _I must not tell people they ain't my father._ He snorted at the idea of Seabury using the word 'ain't'.

 _"What are you laughing at?"_ cried Lafayette, running up to him as he stepped into the garden and blinked to adjust his eyes to the bright sunlight. Laf's hat was askew and their sleeves were rolled up and stained with mud. _"Where's Aléx?"_

 _"Oh,"_ said John rather ashamedly. _"He got sent to Seab- er, Monsigneur's office for lying and shouting and hitting, I think?"_

Their eyes went round as saucers. _"Whoah! Who'd he hit? Was it Charles? Because I hate that guy."_

 _"No, it was..."_ John hesitated. _"It was Monsieur George."_

 _"Whaaaaaaat,"_ demanded Thomas as he and James strolled up.

 _"Aléxandre got sent to Monsigneur's office for lying and shouting and HITTING MONSIEUR GEORGE!"_ exclaimed Laf far more loudly than was necessary.

 _"Who hit Monsieur George?"_ asked Hercules curiously, wandering over and dropping a tiny square of woven dry grass that he had been plaiting in the shade. John picked it up for him and stared at it. It was pretty, but looked like it was on the verge of falling apart. He wished his friends would stop being so loud; he was sure Alex didn't want everyone knowing about his moment of indiscretion. Was that the word? Yeah, indiscretion. Or indiscrimination. Something like that, anyway.

The other children didn't hear, even Paula who raced out of the door at that very moment with cornrows wonkier than the Tower of Pisa ("if your heads were actual rows of corn," Seabury had once been heard to remark, "there would be a small harvest this year indeed"); even Harry, number six, who retraced Paula's steps with a very gloomy look on his face. The person who did hear was George, and he wished all of a sudden that he had sent Charles and John out of the room before dealing with Alexander. But who was he kidding? In any place with a lot of children in a small space, be it the enormous high school where he used to teach or just a large family, rumours only grew.

By midday, the sun was high in the sky, Angelica and Eliza had been commandeered by a harassed Martha to prepare lunch, seventeen children's hair had been cut and/or braided by the same, all traces of weeds had been removed from at least a quarter of the garden and the rumour had grown to epic proportions. As George shepherded the orphans back inside he picked up the excited whisper of one small boy: _"I heard Aléxandre kicked Monsieur George in the -"_

And the door swung shut behind them.

George leant against it, suddenly exhausted. It was too hot to be making administrative decisions. It was _certainly_ too hot for soup, but from what Martha had told him, it was soup every day from here on out. Roast a chicken, she had said, and you feed seven: shred it and stew it in a hogshead of water with an armful of vegetation and you feed seventy. That was all well and good if it applied to everyone. Only it didn't. While the children sweated through their hot meal and tepid water George and Seabury were seated up on their little stage eating cold meats and salad and drinking iced beverages. It was enormously unfair, thought George, and he had just decided to have a very tactful word with the bishop about it when out came the children again in a rush, almost knocking him over.

"Sorry, Mr. Washington," said one of them (Amy? Polly? Lucy?) politely.

 _"It's quite alright,"_ began George, and then realised she wasn't taking in French. He furrowed his brow. _"Parlez-"_

"What was that, George?" inquired Seabury, stepping outside and immediately regretting it. "Good God, it's hot. Oh, pardon me. Don't take the Lord's name in vain, children."

The children all shook their heads devoutly.

"I asked you a question, Washington," repeated Seabury expectantly.

"Oh..." George thought fast. "I was just telling _Polly_ here that she doesn't need to apologise for accidentally pushing me."

And he gestured to the small girl, who looked very surprised. It soon became apparent why when the bishop corrected him, deadpan: "That's Magdalena. I know there's seventy of them but at least make an effort! Alright -" this addressing the children - "number order."

This was a usual practice, it seemed, as it took less than thirty seconds for them to fall into the same order they had been in the day before when George had arrived (had it only been a day?). The fact that numbers eighteen and nineteen were both not present made a large and noticeable gap which seventeen and twenty did not attempt to close up. Sixty-eight and sixty-nine were also missing, so poor Peggy stood in a very lonely position several feet to the right of sixty-seven. At least she remembered her number. Small blessings, thought George ironically.

"Well, then. Alexander is being punished at the moment, Thomas is having his hair cut, and Elizabeth and Angelica are in the kitchen, isn't that correct?" Seabury asked George heartily.

George blinked. "Er, yes, that sounds right."

"Very well, then. Off you go!"

The children set off inside one more time, chattering and letting out little shrieks of laughter. Seabury looked faintly disgusted. "I try to teach them manners, you know. You were in the army? Weren't you?"

"For a short time, yes," George affirmed.

"So was I. Chaplain for the Royal Engineers. I brought them God and the officers brought them order. One can try to do both at once, but..." The bishop shrugged, although his heavy black cassock muted the movement. "It's surprisingly difficult. That's why I was so pleased that you reported Alexander's behaviour to me."

"Oh," said George neutrally. For a moment he had felt pity for Seabury, but now he's back to pure dislike. It's a fine line. "So... his punishment..."

"To copy out lines of Virgil while the rest of them eat until he's done five hundred," said Seabury with satisfaction. "Never fails."

"Which book?"

"Does it matter? It's Latin, he's ten."

"Twelve, I think."

The bishop looked faintly embarrassed, but once again shrugged it off. "Let's go inside. We mustn't keep the dear girls who have made our lunch waiting."

George followed Seabury inside, but not before he was clapped on the shoulder and informed happily, "The kitchen! Best place for them, eh, George!"

That lunchtime David was called upon to read them a quotation. He was a dark-skinned boy of perhaps seven with black hair that was more curly than frizzy, but in some places had grown a lot longer than others. A victim, perhaps, of Martha's scissors. His verse called upon the children to resist the temptations of gluttony. George couldn't help but laugh, although he could hardly blame them, when as soon as he finished they tore into their food like wild horses. At the end of the meal, somehow or other, despite the boiling temperatures of both air and soup, there was not a drop left in any of their bowls. George strongly suspected that some coercion had been involved on the part of some of the bigger children, but he wasn't going to bother about investigating that right then - he had a job to do.

Muttering something about the 'bathroom' (though it was unclear, as he meant it to be, which of the outhouses, one of which was a disgusting shower room, one a still more disgusting row of toilet cubicles, he was referring to) he headed off to Seabury's office. There he found Alex busily stuffing ballpoint pens into his pocket with his left hand while he scribbled out pages and pages of Latin poetry with the other.

When the boy saw George, however, he stood up and made a jerky sort of inclination with his head. _"Désolé,"_ he muttered.

George thanked him kindly - he could see Alex actually regretted what he had done - and asked him how he was getting on.

_"Oh. I've done, like, two hundred lines."_

George's amazement must have registered on his face, because Alex grinned. _"I write fast. I even write Greek fast. And Hebrew. Monsigneur gives out a lot of lines."_

_"You don't translate it, though."_

Alex's grin rapidly faltered, and he looked back down at his paper. _"I can't even translate French into English properly. Let alone this. Besides, it's not really the point to translate it, is it?"_

_"I guess not. But would you like me to tell you what it says anyway?"_

The boy didn't answer, but his eyes were shining. So George bent down over the paper with its lines of scratchy cursive and peered at it through his glasses. He had taught Classics for nearly thirty years, along with Ancient History, AP US History and AP Politics, so his Latin wasn't exactly rusty. And - oh, joy - this was the first book of the Aeneid. George had been teaching this not a week ago. He knew it like he knew his own mind. _"On this side and that, vast cliffs and twin crags loom in the sky, under whose summits the whole sea is calm, far and wide: then, above that, is a scene of glittering woods, and a dark grove overhangs the water, with leafy shade,"_ he read. There were some mental gymnastics required to translate the thing from Latin to English and then from English to French in his head, but nevertheless he managed it fairly fluently.

His young charge had his eyes shut.

George sighed and aimed a wry smile at the picture of the Queen of England that hung on Seabury's wall. _"Not bored already?"_

Alex, who had never, as far as George knew, spent a day of his life away from the dusty air and dangerous, roaring waves of the West Indies, didn't answer but whispered _"Go on. I can see it."_

So George smiled, pushed his glasses up his nose and passed the early afternoon reading Latin poetry in French to a child who had spent the entire day and a half they had known each other ignoring him, telling him he wasn't his son, and fighting people. And it was the best afternoon he'd spent in years. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parlez sounds a bit like Polly. A bit. I mean, it's a stretch, but Seabury isn't the Brain of Britain at the best of times, so... And désolé means sorry in a semi-informal way. 
> 
> PS. If you think that Thomas is just going to stand there and let the Demon Barber Martha Washington shave his hair then oh my goodness you are SO WRONG. hahaha
> 
> PPS. If you breathed today, leave a comment!


	5. Les Malades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to get into a twice-a-week updating routine now that school has started. How does Tuesdays and Fridays sound to youz guys?
> 
> (By the way, Helen (Nelly) and Francis were James Madison's siblings IRL but they are not related to him in this fic.)

_"Monsieur Washington,"_ said a voice from the doorway.

Washington closed the book that he had been reading aloud with a snap, causing a small cloud of dust to drift out of it, and turned to face the originator of the voice. It was a girl that he wasn't sure he had interacted with yet. She was small and slight like most of the children at the orphanage, with very dark skin and black hair in two little puffs above her ears. He strove to remember a name as she stood patiently silhouetted in the slanting doorway of Seabury's office, but came up with nothing.

Alex, seeming to understand his problem, tugged on his sleeve gently and whispered _"That's Abigaël._ Abigail _, in English."_

 _"Abigaël,"_ George said gratefully. _"What can I do for you? It's not time for arithmetic already?"_

The girl looked down at her brown-plimsolled feet. _"Well, no, I don't think so. but Seabury - I mean, Monsigneur - he's gone out. And..."_

When it became clear exactly how reluctant she was to continue, George smiled and motioned with his hand. _"Go ahead."_

 _"A few of the kids are running a fever,"_ Abigail said all in a rush. _"And Suzanne and people think they need to go to the isolation room. It's not malaria -"_

 _"Are you sure?"_ George asked, getting up immediately and reshelving his book as his mind ticked through all the different possibilities that could give rise to these fevers. He was a trained first-aider but he didn't have his kit. Seabury had said something about Martha keeping all that stuff in the isolation room. He would check their temperatures to see if they were really ill, and then...

 _"I think I would know,"_ said Abigail with a slight air of scorn.

 _"It could be that chikungunya disease..."_ He hadn't any idea of the symptoms or treatment for that, though. _"Any rashes? Any pain or sickness?"_

 _"I didn't ask,"_ Abigail murmured, sounding slightly surprised at the man's concern. _"Jacques is coughing a lot, but he's always coughing."_

Jacques was James, the short boy with the handkerchief. George cast his mind back to that morning. Had he seen any signs of fever? Bright eyes, flushed cheeks, excess sweat, delirium? Well, all of the children were sweaty from running around and weeding in the garden. They really needed to take a shower. But that wasn't important right now. Thomas had been playing with James most of the time... _"Is Thomàs ill as well?"_

 _"I haven't a clue,"_ said Abigail cheerfully. _"Marthe's trying to find him so she can cut his hair, but he's been hiding for hours and hours and she's pretty much given up by now. She wants Aléxandre."_

Aléx pulled at the strands of black hair that lay limply over his forehead. _"Will she shave it off?"_

 _"It depends whether you have nits or not, dummy,"_ Abigail answered impatiently. _"Monsieur George, can they go to the isolation room? Please?"_

 _"I'll go and see,"_ George called over his shoulder, having already stowed away his glasses in one of his trouser pockets and begun to hurry off to the classroom. Abigail followed with dragging feet while Alex, pale and nervous, made his way through the deserted dining room - the trestle tables seeming very empty and silent without the rows of chattering children to fill them - and into the kitchen where Martha sat peeling potatoes.

"Well, come on, child," she snapped in English. Alex realised how cross she was and flinched back. Why did Thomas have to hide? He didn't care about his hair that much, did he?

Martha modified her tone when she saw the flinch. "Calm down, now," she said more gently. "This won't take long if you don't fidget. And while I take care of your hair, you can peel my potatoes for me - how does that sound?"

Alex nodded silently and took a step across the torn linoleum floor. The kitchen might have been the cleanest room in the orphanage but it sure as heck wasn't the tidiest. Pots and pans of various sizes and ages littered the floor and countertops, and the ancient wood stove belched out smoke both through its chimney towards the sky and through a hole in its lid into the room. The walls had used to be white, and perhaps the floor had too, once. Now they were both an unattractive shade of beige. Everything in the orphanage seemed to revert to that same colour; even the sand outside was beige rather than white as it was down by the sea where the market and the shops and most of the houses were - where Alex's house had been. Alex looked down at his skinny legs. His shorts were beige, too, having faded from their original khaki colour, and so was his skin. He suddenly felt very small and insignificant; why, even the pile of potatoes Martha was pointing to was beige, and bigger than him as well, towering almost above her own head (she was sitting down, though). There was another, smaller pile in a big pot, freshly peeled and the palest gold colour, like Eliza's skin. Alex thought Eliza had pretty skin, but it wasn't as pretty as John's. John's was like -

But he mustn't start thinking of that now.

Alex accepted the peeler and sat at Martha's feet, wondering if (for the heat of the stove added to the usual warm breezes blowing through the cracks in the walls was almost too much to bear) he could just melt into the floor. No one would notice he was gone, he thought. He was just another orphan in a sea of beige-coloured shirts and pinafores. He didn't have a mother or father to care about his disappearance. Even Martha, who was the only mother figure most of them knew, combed his hair with a practised kind of haste; her hands were warm, but at the same time they were as cold and clinical as the comb's metal teeth. His own mother wouldn't do it like that. She would stroke his hair and be gentle with the knots, and let him look into the little, cracked mirror as she trimmed all the split ends away.

 _"Marthe,"_ he said quietly as he dug an eye out of a potato with the sharp end of the peeler, _"do I have nits?"_

"Don't talk French now, you bad boy. And no, you don't, although that's a wonder with the amount of time you spend fighting with that Thomas. He's infested."

"Ew," Alex couldn't help but say, flinging the potato into the cauldron and watching it splash.

"You wouldn't happen to know where he's hiding, would you?"

Alex couldn't shake his head for the fear of catching a nick from the blunt pair of scissors Martha was waving around. So he just said, truthfully, "No, ma'am."

If Martha noticed that the way he said 'ma'am' sounded a lot like 'Mom', she didn't comment, and instead started humming a song about a man who had done her wrong. Alex peeled potatoes and listened for all of fifteen minutes while she sang. By that time his hair was cut to just above his ears on the right side and just below them on the left side, his neck was minimally scratched and his eyes were suspiciously wet.

"Are you alright, _chéwi?"_ Martha asked, and then sighed and bit her lip when she realised she'd let out a Creole word. "Don't you tell Mr. Seabury I said that, you hear?"

"I won't," said Alex furiously, rubbing at his eyes. "I'm fine. You want Gilbert next, yes?"

Martha nodded and gave him a gentle pat to send him on his way. "You'd better get back to copying out the Bible."

"It's poetry today," Alex replied with a small smile, beginning to leave.

"Makes a change."

Alex stopped in the door, a lump in his throat suddenly which he couldn't swallow no matter how he tried, and watched Martha pick up her peeler again and start scraping a potato, ridding it of its knobbly brown covering, piece by piece, strip by strip.

"What is it, Alexander?"

"Call me _chéwi_ again, please," Alex requested almost inaudibly.

Martha closed her eyes for a second, clearly impatient, but managing to produce her usual sweet smile anyway. _"Mwen chéwi, Aléx,_ my very, very dear boy. Now hop it!"

Alex hopped it.

\---

George walked into the classroom and was greeted with a blackboard that proclaimed multiple times the epithet "Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and tomorrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee" and Thomas, still possessing all his hair, standing at the front of the class and leading them in a rousing chorus of "Onward, Christian Soldiers". They weren't bad singers, actually, and they knew all the words. Though George shouldn't really have been surprised by that. Seabury probably had them all learn hymns by rote the same way they learnt Bible verses.

As soon as Thomas saw George at the door, though, he dropped his hands, let out a startled shout and dived behind Seabury's desk (to uproarious laughter from all the rest of them, of course).

 _"Alright, Thomàs,"_ George said, his mouth twitching. _"That was a very nice acrobatic display. I understand how you're feeling, but if you have hair lice you can't go spreading them around to all and sundry."_

 _"I don't have lice,"_ came a cross voice from behind the desk.

 _"You do, and you've got double the lice 'cos you've got double the hair of anyone else,"_ joked Hercules, leaning over to high-five another boy, who was small and blonde and purely angelic but for the soup smeared around his mouth.

 _"Settle down,"_ George told them. _"Abigaël, who did you say was feverish?"_

Abigail, standing on her tiptoes and looking very important, pointed at the children in question as she said their names. _"Jacques, Hélène, Guillaume and François."_

George nodded in acknowledgement, looking carefully over the four she had mentioned. James certainly looked pretty bad. Helen, a waiflike ten-year-old, was alright except for slightly hoarse breathing. William was lying on the floor and groaning in a theatrical sort of way, and George could immediately see he was faking it. He was no stranger to children trying to get out of class, especially with a new teacher that didn't know them as well. Francis, already unusually pale, had gone white and was shaking slightly from cold, which was alarming, as it had to be at least ninety degrees Fahrenheit inside the room. Hercules, George saw with a mixture of amusement and affection, had given him his beanie.

He ran his eye over the group one more time and made a snap decision. _"Hélène, help James and François to the isolation room. You're all going to have to stay there until I can come up and check on you properly. Guillaume, I don't think you require such drastic measures. You can sit out of the lesson, but you would also be sitting out of recess."_

William sat up with such amazing speed that the girl next to him nearly fell over. Helen took Francis' hand obediently and led him out, but James remained seated - no, not seated as such, _huddled_ might be a better word for it - his arms wrapped protectively around his knees, staring at nothing.

George experienced a moment of almost disconnected shock before he realised Thomas had come out from behind the desk and was heaving James up and towards the door.

 _"Thomàs, does this happen often?"_ George quickly asked once he (unlike James) had retrieved his senses.

 _"Yeah,"_ said Thomas shortly. _"I'm going to stay with him in the isolation room."_

 _"That's not your job,"_ George said kindly but firmly, crossing over to the smaller boy and picking him up as Thomas' arms began to shake with the effort of keeping his friend upright. _"I'll take him there, do a full checkup and then come back. Why don't you guys sing some more songs until I get back?"_

Thomas looked relieved, surprised, embarrassed and angry all at once, an odd combination of emotions for such a young boy, and when he answered, it was in a strangled voice. _"It is my job - I - that's what I do -"_

 _"I don't want you to catch whatever Jacques, Hélène and François have,"_ George told him. _"Sing something nice. Drum. Beatbox. Whatever. Please, Thomàs, just to keep everyone occupied."_

It took a short while, but Thomas eventually jerked his head in acquiescence.

George patted him on the shoulder, still keeping a careful hold on the frozen, limp James in his arms, and retraced his steps back towards the office and the isolation room. This was a kind of hospital ward for when kids got sick - and they did, frequently, for obvious reasons - although it wasn't like any hospital ward George had ever seen. There were no rows of sterile white beds and no concerned, capable nurses. Instead there was Helen and Francis sitting together on a mattress, looking ill and miserable. There was also a bucket. Apart from further mattresses and buckets at regular intervals, that was all. The room was dark and sweltering hot, and smelled like bleach, which at least meant it had been cleaned, George reminded himself.

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..." floated down the corridor.

 _"Will Marthe be coming?"_ whispered Helen as George laid James down on a mattress.

 _"She's busy, I'm afraid,"_ the man replied, inwardly cursing the bad timing of this small outbreak. _"But I'll come to check on you as frequently as I can, and if you need me, just shout. I'm going to run and get some sheets, now. Is that okay?"_

 _"We're not allowed sheets in case we puke on them,"_ Helen said sullenly. Francis, still shivering although he was being tightly hugged by the former, nodded in agreement.

George flushed, his eyes darkening - but his voice remained calm. _"Well, just try to aim into the buckets, then. But don't worry if you do. I'll get them washed in the launderette in the village. Okay?"_

Helen said _"Okay,"_ and Francis nodded in agreement. James was still unresponsive, although his eyes were open and seemed slightly less bloodshot than before. George knelt by his side and checked his pulse, which was fast but regular. There was a cabinet on the wall that drunkenly leant to one side, and it contained several ancient examples of medical paraphernalia - a mercury thermometer, a steel stethoscope, a package of (thankfully) sterile syringes that dated from the late eighties, a row of large medicine bottles labeled in both English and Latin, but no French. They did not have expiration dates on them, so George decided to chuck them out at the earliest opportunity and use his rapidly slimming wallet to get in a good stock of paracetamol and Nurofen. The thermometer, likewise, was definitely not going in the childrens' mouths. George directed Helen to hold it in her ear and be _very careful_ while he went to get bedlinen.

When he returned, not only with sheets, but also pillows and a pile of blankets for poor Francis, the latter announced that Helen's temperature had been 101°.

 _"Yes, and his was 103°,"_ said Helen helpfully, coughing a little. _"What does that mean? Should I help you with the sheets, monsieur? Can you hold them?"_

George reassured her that he was perfectly capable of holding the sheets, and asked what James' temperature had been.

"Oh." Helen looked guilty. "I tried to go over and take it but I got dizzy. I'm really sorry, sir."

Once again George noted the tendency of the children to slip from French to English when they thought they were in trouble. _"Not to worry. Just lie down and take it easy, both of you."_

James' temperature was 103° as well. That was bad. That was very bad. He wouldn't have been so anxious if it was an adult, but a child, especially one with a history of ill-health. And Helen, although she only had a mild fever, coupled with her dizziness... well, George wasn't optimistic. If they got worse they might have to go to hospital, of which the nearest one was two islands away.

As George made the beds he tried not to let his fears show on his face, but Francis, snuggling into his nest of blankets, was obviously a perceptive child. _"Monsieur,"_ he asked hoarsely, _"are we going to die, do you think?"_

George almost dropped the pillow he was holding. _"Wh - what! No! NO! Why would you think -"_

 _"Pierre died last week and he had a fever and chills too,"_ the boy explained, too pathetic to be pragmatic, too honest (or scared) to be tactful. _"It's because the mosquitoes bit him... and I've got a big bite too, right above my knee."_

 _Are you sure it isn't malaria?_ he had asked Abigail.

 _I think I would know,_ she had said. But had that been scorn in her voice at George's ignorance, or fear?

 _"You are absolutely not going to d - pass away from some silly mosquito bites,"_ George eventually managed. _"Now lie down and rest. It'll do you good. And if you need someone shout as loudly as you can and Martha or I will come and find you."_

 _"I thought you said she was busy,"_ said Helen sharply.

 _"I'll explain to her. Haircuts can wait until you're all better. Now I've got to go, but do you think you could get yourself over to this bed? It would be a lot more comfortable."_ He was wheedling now in a way that he'd never done with his high-schoolers, but desperate times, etc., and it wasn't like Helen was an eighteen-year-old Goth with an attitude problem. Quite the reverse, actually, as the happy smile that she managed when George tucked her up on the newly sheeted mattress was testament to. Francis had already burrowed himself into the blankets. He tucked up James too, who was not only staring into the middle distance, but also shaking now. Not a good sign. But George still smiled reassuringly at Helen as he shut the door behind him, and went off with a spring in his step first to inform the beautiful Martha about the three sick children - she didn't seem surprised - and then to teach a class of sixty-six what eight times ten was, a lesson which quickly turned into a geography class with added music. He still praised Eliza's beatboxing skills. He still applauded Hercules, John, Gilbert and Alex's improvised sway/dance routine. He still comforted a restless, nervous Thomas and a very upset Peggy who had bruised her knee a couple of days ago and only just realised it.

But it took all of his strength; all he wanted to do was punch a wall. Or, even better, punch the leader of the so-called 'charity' that couldn't even provide decent medicine supplies to an orphanage full of vulnerable children.

He'd never imagined himself being in a situation like this before.

What was he going to _do?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I sure do love writing stories about sick children, huh. 
> 
> Please leave a comment below if you enjoyed it! (Or if you didn't - I can always use some constructive criticism.)


	6. Les Taies d'Oreiller

George slammed his hands down onto the table and glared with all of his force at the man seated opposite him. "This is unacceptable. Simply unacceptable!"

"No, Mr. Washington," Seabury said - his voice was level but he was clearly furious. You could see it in his narrowed eyes, his intimidatingly upright position, the taut muscles in his neck. "It is your behaviour that is unacceptable."

"I did nothing that wasn't necessary -"

"You threw away all our medicine bottles!"

"Martha said they were two years old!"

"Nevertheless, they were all we had! You are acting like one of the children - acting, sir, before you think. We're not due for a medical supply restock until next January -"

"I am perfectly willing to pay out of my own pocket for decent supplies," George interrupted.

"And what happens when your own pocket runs out?"

Seabury smiled triumphantly at George's suddenly defeated posture. He had the man there, and he knew it. George had never been a rich man. If he had had sufficient money to live on he wouldn't have taken the job at the orphanage. Would bankrupting himself even yield enough supplies to last until January? Barring a disaster, yes - but disasters seemed distressingly frequent here. If a child broke their leg, as children would always do occasionally, where would the money come from to get a cast and crutches? As George was well aware from years of teaching, any mishap, however improbable, was still possible.

"I see," he said eventually. "I admit I might have been... a little hasty. But giving the children out-of-date medicine is incredibly dangerous."

"I understand completely," Seabury reassured him. "You were only acting in their best interests. But however full your head is of fantasies of saving the day, this time you have done no such thing. And Martha says you've made up the cots in the isolation room with her best linen."

"Best -" George blinked, and then groaned and put his head in his hands. "That was her _best_  -"

"Yes, it was," came an incensed voice from outside the office.

George picked his head up and turned in his chair, his mind repeating over and over again, _You screwed up, you screwed up, you screwed up_. Martha was standing in the doorway just like Abigail had been earlier, but as well as being six inches taller she was also incandescent with rage. Unlike Seabury, who clearly preferred much more passive-aggressive tactics, Martha's anger rolled off her in waves. George was torn between feeling only mortified shame and contemplating how beautiful she was like that. Her eyes were sparkling - those eyes, almost gold in the lamplight - he could have drowned in them.

He suspected that she would have rather liked him to.

"I sewed that pillowcase with my bare hands," she was ranting, pacing back and forth in front of the two men. "My bare hands! I spent hours on it. The piping I didn't even buy, I made that myself too! Do you know how long it takes to make piping? You - it - I - it's a long time, alright! And what's happened now? Tell him!" she demanded of Seabury. "Tell him how I found my pillowcase when I went to check on those poor lambs."

The bishop flushed a little and drew himself up. "Why don't you tell him yourself, Martha dear," he commanded patronisingly.

The outraged cook rolled her eyes and took a step forward to jab her finger into George's chest accusingly. "I found _Hélène_ had been sick all over it!" she hissed.

George with difficulty kept himself from screwing up his nose in disgust. Seabury coughed.

"How could you have been so thoughtless? If you wanted them to have bedding so much you could have brought it down from their dormitory."

Seabury coughed again, pointedly. "Martha."

She stared at him. "What? Oh. I meant Helen, of course, not _Hélène_ , but that's hardly the point. The point is that my pillowcase is ruined, and if I hadn't taken all the others away right then, so would they have been. So! Don't! Do! It! Again!"

These last words were practically spat into George's face, and the sarcastic "sir" she added at the end sounded more like an insult than a formality.

George watched her back with a sinking feeling as she flounced out. If he had ever had a chance with his 'goddess' he'd ruined it now. He couldn't help but feel a little mad at Helen for missing the bucket when she vomited, although of course it was his fault in the first place for using the Wrong Pillowcases. God, everything here was so complicated. If it had been the boarding school in Virginia where George had studied forty years ago, the sick kids would have been carted off to Matron's spotless infirmary at the first signs of illness, where they would have been cared for in spotless if cramped surroundings without the masters having to worry a thing about it. If it had been George's old boarding school there would have been washing machines (and yes, they had washing machines in the South in 1977, in which respect it was infinitely superior to Saint-Denis in 2017) so getting sick on the Wrong Pillowcases wouldn't have mattered. As much. At all. Why, oh, why did George ever take this job? He honestly didn't remember any more.

But he knew why he had to stay.

It was for the kids. Yes, he would fight for the kids. Fight for their right to speak their own languages, to fancy members of the same sex, to learn things that weren't Bible verses and monotonous arithmetical facts. Fight for proper medicine and better food. Fight for spare pillowcases and washing machines and... well, he'd just say he betted Martha didn't have much in the way of household technology. It sounded stupid to say he was fighting for bedlinen and vacuum cleaners, but if that's what it took to make these kids' lives better then why shouldn't he?

"Women," said Seabury with derision. "Always wittering on about their precious sewing. Still, no one else would take her job, so we have to keep her happy. Do you understand where I'm coming from?"

George schooled his face into an expression of somewhat unctuous agreement and nodded.

"I'm glad." And for a moment, Seabury did sincerely look glad. "Well, I think it's probably time for us to turn in for the night. The children are already in bed. At least, I hope they are. That'll be another of your jobs, to keep them sleeping through the night. If they come to you whining about bad dreams just give them a smack and send them back to their dorm again. They're not really scared, just want an excuse to be out of bed."

George was sure he was going cross-eyed in his efforts to keep quiet and agreeable, but luckily as they made their way out of the dark room and down the equally dark corridor Seabury didn't notice. They parted ways outside the bishop's tiny bedroom with a terse exchange of 'goodnight's, and George tramped up the stairs, mind whirling with thoughts. What could he use? How could he get help? Who would respond to an appeal by a small orphanage in the Caribbean, where the children weren't starving or dying? (Although... but he shelved that thought in the back of his mind with a shudder. All James, Helen and Francis had was a perfectly normal fever.) People saw so many worse images nowadays of famine-ravaged African villages and war-torn Arab communities that Seabury's perfectly normal if rundown orphanage would be peanuts to them. Besides, he had always been disgusted by journalists that could unemotionally film or photograph crying children and show the images on national television. He would never do so himself. So, to return to his original question: what _could_  he use?

The answer was simple.

The written word.

George had never been a writer; he would freely admit that to his students when they asked for help with descriptive essays. He was a teacher of politics, not creative writing. Facts and figures, not metaphors and flowery adjectives. Sure, he could write and send off a dozen indignant formal letters to the charity currently sponsoring the orphanage and others dealing with similar causes, but somehow he felt that wasn't what was needed. As he undid his tie with practised fingers and kicked off his shoes, laying down on a bed strangely lacking pillows (was this Martha's revenge?) he kept thinking. And thinking. And thinking.

 _"Shut your face, Aléx, you're going to wake Monsieur like you did last night!"_ came a whisper from beyond the wall.

And there! George had his answer.

Just like last night, he sprang up, fumbled with the shirt buttons that he had undone before lying down, and hastened to the door of the storage room. Clearly La Résistance was holding another meeting. He could hear Thomas and Alex trading half-hearted insults, Peggy whining about her sore knee, Theodosia lisping something that he couldn't quite discern, Hercules and Laf playing a quiet clapping game. It was impressive how they managed to be so quiet, actually. They must be practised, George thought with an indulgent smile. Not that he at all condoned the fact that they were losing a good night's sleep, especially Peggy, who was young enough to still need to sleep for at least ten hours with added naps during the day, but still. Impressive.

He knocked on the door. Immediate and utter silence. That was fair; he'd expected nothing less. Listening carefully with his ear to the keyhole, however, he discerned a muffled sort of squeaking that might possibly have come from Eliza. Maybe Angelica had her hand over her sister's mouth. He wouldn't put it past her, even though it was clear the three sisters loved each other very much.

 _"Hello,"_ he called softly, choosing to ignore the panicked flurry that arose at his greeting. _"Can I come in?"_

Once again, there was no answer. George merely shrugged, turned the handle slowly to give them fair warning and went in anyway, expecting to see a knot of frightened children like he had last night. Instead there was not a single child in the room. He squinted through the darkness as best he could and still saw nothing. Then just the barest flicker of white registered in his peripheral vision.

 _"No."_ George rubbed his eyes in honest amazement. _"Eleven of you are not hiding in this one room. That's impossible."_

He crossed the room and opened a random crate just a crack. A pair of frightened brown eyes stared back at him. Then another pair, then another. If he had to guess he'd say it was Theodosia and two of the Schuyler sisters - Eliza and Peggy, probably. Angelica wouldn't fit. He opened the crate's lid all the way and saw he was right.

Immediately, and in English, Eliza said "It's not eleven. It's only us. We're sorry. We'll go back to the dorm now."

"Thorry," echoed Theodosia. Peggy just pouted and stayed silent.

George held out his hand to help them out. _"Come on, now,"_ he said with a chuckle. _"You and I both know that's not true. I'm not cross. I just want to ask your help with something. That goes for everyone here,"_ he added to the room at large. And then he waited.

Hercules was the first to come out - he'd hidden underneath a pile of Martha's precious pillowcases (clean ones, thank goodness). Thomas and Laf revealed themselves from behind the bookcase where Charles had been, earlier. John clambered out of the same fruity-smelling box as before. Angelica and Maria stuck out their heads from a laundry bag, which made an odd picture, but they clearly didn't want to get the whole way out until they knew it was safe. As each child presented themselves, George took a mental roll call. Someone was definitely missing. Oh, of course, James was ill. Well, then, that only left...

 _"Aléxandre,"_ he said with an eye-roll. Of course it was.

 _"Who?"_ asked John innocently.

 _"I know you've misbehaved before, Aléx, but I promise I'm not angry. And I need you, especially, because you're a fast writer. Can you come out? Please?_ " His head was tilted upwards so that he was talking to the ceiling for a reason, and sure enough when he looked down again Alex was standing in front of him.

 _"Thank you,"_ George said genuinely, having to make a conscious effort not to add 'son'.

Alex gave him a small smile as Laf (or maybe it was Thomas - George had forgotten which one wore their hair up) raised their hand hesitantly. "Are we going to forge checks for you like we did for Monsieur Reynolds?" they asked in English.

 _"Don't be stupid,"_ scowled their brother. Or sister. Or sibling.

 _"Shut up, Thomás,"_ said Maria and Angelica almost at the same time as each other (incidentally, they were still in the laundry bag).

Ah, so that was Thomas. The other boy, or girl, or child, must be Lafayette. George sighed. He had to get this sorted out in his head. _"Lafayette. Gilbert. Would you please tell me what gender you are and which pronouns you prefer?"_

Laf stared at him mutely.

 _"I promise I don't mind if they're not binary,"_ George encouraged him.

There was a beat of silence, then: "They are," Laf mumbled at the floor. " _Non-binaire._ Th-they and them. That's why I don't like speaking French much."

 _"I see,"_ George said, endeavouring to make his smile comforting instead of pitying. He'd never really thought about how much trouble people who identified as neither male nor female must have with French and other Romantic languages where every word had a gender and there weren't any mainstream neutral pronouns. 'They' was just as gendered as 'he' or 'she'. _"Well, I'll definitely respect that, and you can speak whatever language you like around me. Within reason,"_ he added hurriedly. _"No Pig Latin or anything."_

The children giggled, probably just at the odd phrase, as he betted they didn't know what Pig Latin was. What did kids these days use for a coded language? Even if he knew, it probably wouldn't apply to this tiny island where pidgin words and speech patterns were used just as much as regular French ones.

 _"What do you need, monsieur?"_ Eliza asked eventually, her large, dark eyes curious.

"Well," George began, sitting down on a crate and motioning for the children to do the same. They immediately arranged themselves on the floor in neat rows, legs and arms crossed, likely by force of habit. _"You know that Jacques, François and Hélène aren't very well."_

 _"They're dying,"_ said Hercules very matter-of-factly. Thomas gave a low growl and made as if to throw a punch at the other boy, but before he could Angelica extracted herself from the laundry bag and swooped in to restrain him.

_"Thank you, Angélique, and Hercule - no, they're not dying. But they are quite sick. And when we're sick we need medicine, don't we?"_

The children nodded solemnly. This was, after all, a fact of life.

 _"Jesus said_ 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick do'," quoted Alex eagerly.

George blinked in surprise for the second time that day, eventually saying, _"Thank you, Aléx, but there aren't any doctors on the island, are there?"_

This time all heads were shaken. Unmistakably this was true.

 _"Sometimes if we write letters to people and tell them our friends are sick,"_ George continued, trying to phrase his message as tactfully as possible, _"they will send money for medicine which can make our friends better."_

The children considered this, and then John raised his hand and asked, _"If we write and say that the_ orphelinat _building is busted, will they send us money to make it less busted?"_

 _"Exactly!"_ George exclaimed, and then, remembering that the other children were sleeping, toned his voice down a notch. _"Exactly. And if we write that we haven't got books they might send us money for books, d'you see?"_

 _"Books!"_ Thomas cried, wriggling out of Angelica's grip. She didn't notice, having gone slightly dreamy-eyed at the mention of said reading material. George wasn't surprised - he'd already pegged her as the literary type.

 _"I want to write about the hurricane,"_ Alex piped up.

Maria looked at him askance. _"You were only two when it happened,"_ she said dubiously. _"You can't remember it."_

 _"I do,"_ he said stubbornly. _"I remember every bit."_

And Laf nodded, although George was pretty sure he was even younger than Alex. "It's not something you forget," he agreed quietly, in English.

 _"Then write about it!"_ George urged them. _"Tell them about the hurricane, but also tell them about your life now, how you're feeling, what you do every day, what you want in life, what your dreams for the future are. Like a diary, except I don't want to hear 'ooh, I really fancy Jean',"_ this cutting his eyes at Alex, who laughed a little guiltily. _"And whatever you do, don't lie. Tell the truth about everything, and I mean everything. Do you think you could write these letters for me?"_

 _"Yes,"_ chorused the children.

 _"When are we going to do it?"_ questioned Eliza eagerly, wrapping her arm around a hyperactively excited Peggy.

 _"In the afternoons while I teach the others 'arithmetic',"_ George decided, putting air quotes around 'arithmetic'. _"Oh, and one more thing. This is not something that Monsigneur needs to know about. Clear?"_

 _"As crystal,"_ Thomas said snarkily, but while the others were filing out of the suddenly very cramped storage room and back to their dormitories he lingered and tugged on George's flapping shirtsleeve.

 _"What is it,_ mon chou?" George asked, ruffling Thomas' still very large and puffy head of hair. _"When are you going to get this cut, hmm?"_

 _"Never,"_ Thomas answered perfectly seriously. _"Monsieur, I want to ask you a question."_

_"Go ahead."_

_"Will these people really send medicine for Jacques? And Hélène, and François?"_

It was clear that Hélène and François were afterthoughts and that Thomas was really only concerned about his particular best friend. George smiled reassuringly. _"I hope so,"_ he said. _"But they certainly won't if you're too tired to write a nice letter."_

Thomas took the hint and scampered off to bed. So did George, although since he wasn't a preteened boy he didn't so much 'scamper' as 'trudge'. By the time he finally settled down to sleep, though, he was a lot happier than he had been an hour previously. These kids were going to do it, get themselves out of this predicament George found them in.

They were going to write their way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright lads, time to play a game called "Which Hamilton Song Is This Chapter Plagiarising From"? Comment if you know!


	7. Les Lettres

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer's block sucks :( still the chapter is here now, and on the correct updating day too!
> 
> (Oh yeah and I changed some of the surnames to sound more French, so Burr is Bure, Schuyler is Scoulier, Thomas goes by Laf's surname of du Motier and Alex by his mother's surname of Faucette.)

It was the next afternoon. The morning had passed in a blur; Sally had woken up trembling, crying and sick to her stomach in the girl's dormitory and joined the other three patients in the isolation room. Martha (the goddess appearing more distant to George every second) had called an emergency suspension of the normal hair-cutting routine, and everybody had breathed a sign of relief, especially Thomas - and also Laf, who had loyally joined their brother's quest to escape Martha's scissors. The masters' breakfast had seemed to be less hearty than Seabury wished, judging by the angry whispered conversation he had exchanged with the cook. As for the children, their porridge had been just as inedible as always, so it hadn't really mattered. George had tried to get the children to have another go at the garden after breakfast, but their hearts had clearly not been in it. The breakout of illness had made them all skittish and filled the warm air with a tension that hadn't been there before. George had been shouted at by no less than five incensed teenagers by lunchtime, none of whom he could remember the names of. A girl had also cut herself with pinking shears; possibly Henrietta, possibly Ruth. He wasn't even going to try to guess. He had fixed her wound up himself since Martha was so busy, and made a bit of a pig's ear of it, but judging by the way she was running around happily it hadn't hurt her much.

Yes, it was after lunch already, Seabury was off who knew where, and most of the children were having a recess. George had divided them into teams and taught them Stick-In-The-Mud, and then come back inside, where the miniature revolutionaries from last night were still there, sitting and looking at him expectantly.

He smiled at them and produced a stack of paper. _"I know you're eager to get started, but let me just lay down some ground rules. Number one."_

 _"The challenge: demand satisfaction,"_ called John from where he was reclined by the window.

There was a ripple of laughter from his friends, and George chuckled. _"Not quite. Number one is be respectful. Number two is no swear words, which should really come under number one, but I know what kids are like. Number three is keep it to one page only."_ He looked meaningfully at Alex, who did his best to appear angelically innocent. _"Number four is best handwriting and careful with your spelling. That's really all the rules."_

 _"Really?"_ asked Thomas with a cocky grin. _"Seems almost too easy."_ But his voice didn't sound as confident as his demeanour looked. As much as he tried, he couldn't really appear anything other than small and scared. George's heart went out to him and he gave his shoulder a light squeeze as he handed out paper and Alex's stolen pens.

They had just settled down and begun to write, resting their papers on the uneven floorboards for want of tables or books, when a shy voice came from across the room. _"Could I write too. Please?"_

George looked up from where he was seated at the desk in the corner jotting down figures. Aaron stood behind the rest of the children, head bowed, arms behind his back. When had he come in? How had he escaped the eagle eyes of Susan, who George had told to watch that no one left her sight?

 _"He doesn't have any opinions to write down,"_ Alex scoffed.

 _"Thut up,"_ said Theodosia unexpectedly, half-standing. _"You don't know anything, Aléxandre. Aaron has loadth and loadth of opinionth!"_

The boy of whom she spoke blushed very red as George gave the two a thoughtful look. _"Well, I don't see any reason why Aaron shouldn't join us. You know what we're doing, don't you, son?"_

There was a flash of jealousy in Alex's eyes at the pet name that rather amused the teacher, but his attention was drawn back to Aaron as the latter nodded. _"Théo told me at breakfast."_

 _"Tattletale,"_ hissed Herc.

 _"Settle down,"_ said George reprovingly, providing Aaron with stationary and directing him to a free space on the floor. The children complied, for a while at least, but they had only been writing for five minutes when there was another disturbance, in the form of a question from Eliza.

 _"How should we sign it off, monsieur?"_ asked the middle sister, chewing her pen thoughtfully. She always seemed to be the one who asked questions, which George admired; not so much for her curiosity but for her willingness to put herself forward so others could enjoy the benefit of the answer given to her. He did have to think very carefully before answering, though.

 _"It's polite to put_ 'yours sincerely' -"

 _"Monthieur Reynoldth uthed to tell uth to write_ 'your motht obedient thervant'," piped up Theodosia with a huge gaptoothed smile, only to guiltily cover her mouth when she saw Maria flinch at the name. _"I'm thorry, Marine!"_

 _"It's okay,"_ Maria said quickly. Too quickly. _"That was stupid of me."_

Laf looked indignant, and reached over to pat their friend's arm. "No, it wasn't; you're not stupid, _Marine!"_

 _"Anyway,"_ Angelica interjected smoothly, seeing Maria was getting more upset as the latter tried to slap Laf's clumsy hand away. _"That's not what Élise meant. She meant do we use our French names? Or our English names? What about surnames?"_

George blinked. _"Surnames?"_ Then he felt like an idiot for asking; of course they had surnames. It wasn't like they had been forbidden the use of them when their parents died. Although, actually, knowing Seabury, it was entirely likely that they had been.

 _"Yes,"_ said Alex patiently, looking up for once from his furious scribblings. _"Surnames. Mine's Faucette. Yours is Washington. See?"_

 _"I see,"_ George replied with another amused smile. _"Well, I'd put your full name. In French. After all, your English name isn't really yours, is it?"_

The children looked at each other, confused. They'd obviously never thought of it that way. But it was true - legally, their French names were valid. Their English names were only given to them by Seabury as a way of referring to them while they were in the orphanage. Literally everyone else they knew or ever would know did or would call them by their French names. It made sense. Aaron was the first to nod, then the rest of the kids slowly followed. And then they bent their heads down over their pieces of paper and continued to write.

After supper, George requested the use of Seabury's office so that he could read the letters and stamp and address the envelopes. He settled into the comfortable desk chair to peruse them, and picked up Thomas' letter first. All of the letters were written in English with varying degrees of skill. Oddly enough, Thomas' was one of the shortest, as well as badly spelt and stained with so many blotches of ink and tears that it was almost illegible. He had crossed a lot of it out, as well, not with neat lines but with angry, black, scribbled zigzags that weaved in illogical patterns around the shaky words. He obviously wasn't a confident writer - which, thought George fondly, made it all the more touching that he had been so eager to join in on their little enterprise. The letter went like this:

~~_Dear Sirs it is with_ ~~

~~_Dere_ ~~

_Dear Sirs. I hope you are well. We are not._

_My name is Thomas and I am eleven and a half so far as I know although I'm not sure about my_ ~~ezact~~ _exact birthday. I live on St. Denis and there are seventy in the_ ~~orphage~~ _orphanage here. Although there is only meant to be fifty. Bishop Seaberry is our headmaster. And Monsieur Washington is our teacher who telled us to write to you. It is about James and the others who are sick. They mite die on_ ~~acount~~ ~~accont~~ _account of how we_ ~~doesn't~~ _don't have any medisine for them to get better._ ~~Jac~~ _James is my most greatest friend and he's very sickly because he was born too soon and is small. So even if it was a cold it mite get very worse. And he would die. So please bring medisine_ ~~ _please please please_ **please**~~

_Yr. most obedt. S.,_

_Thomás du Motier_

_Postscriptum: ~~ezcuse~~ excuse mistakes please as I dont write very well although I speak just fine._

By way of contrast, Alex's letter was astonishing: long, stylishly written and in elegant cursive handwriting. There were no spelling mistakes. He even used the occasional comma. And he'd been right - his memory of the hurricane was as detailed as if it had happened yesterday. It was written like so:

_Most esteemed sirs,_

_I take my pen to write you about our island of St. Denis. You probably don't know where it is. I'm not sure I even know quite where it is. I do know for sure that it is in the West Indies and that it is a French Protectorate because we learnt that a while ago. You might remember one time reading maybe in the newspaper about how there was a hurricane some years ago on the island. Well I want to tell you about it so you can understand about what it was like._

_I was very little but I remember looking outside the window and seeing the sea so high, higher than it ever was before. It was because of the wind. The wind blew and knocked down so many houses and killed so many people. And there was lots and lots of lightning and thunder and I was terribly terribly scared. But my maman wasn't there like normal to say it was alright because she was dead. She had gone outside after a day of this to find water and been drowned and she was dead. But even if she'd lived she couldn't have found any water because there wasn't any, it had all turned salt, the rain and the sea had made it so._

_And then there was a week of no water and no food and more and more people died until the aid volunteers came and helped us, and sent all us kids whose mamans and papas had drowned to the orphanage. Only the orphanage building had been ruined by the hurricane too. And it's ten years later now and everything's still ruined because we haven't the money to fix it up, and people are still dying from awful diseases because we haven't the money to cure them. Even some of my friends here._

_Monsigneur Seabury once said in a sermon "Succour the miserable and lay up a treasure in Heaven" which I think means that God will be happy if you help us because it's the kind of thing that He wants us to do. Help the sick and poor that is. You might think I'm very ignorant because I don't know if I'm right about the meaning but even if I'm not I think it's beautiful to help people who aren't happy. And we are very unhappy here. So would you please help us, if you can?_

_Your most grateful and obedient servant,_

_Aléxandre Faucette_

George could have cried at that last paragraph, but he didn't. All he did was fold up the letter very carefully, very gently, and slip it into a blue airmail envelope just like he had Thomas'. And then he turned to the next letter; it was Angelica's, and Angelica had no such pretensions to elegance. Her letter was simply a large, dense paragraph on half a sheet of paper which contained the facts of the matter and not much else, although it is true she wrote very neatly, in a large, clear print in contrast to the flowery cursive of the others, possibly (read: definitely) because of being educated outside the orphanage where Seabury's habits couldn't be imposed upon her as a standard. But it was the language of the thing, not the structure, which really made George sit up. It was almost alarmingly perceptive. Angelica had infused her writing with hints of worries that shouldn't belong in the mind of a fifteen-year-old. This is what it said:

_Honoured Sirs (and Madams),_

_This letter is sent from a place which you may think is a paradise, but in fact is in dire need of help. Our home, Saint-Denis, was ravaged ten years ago by an awful hurricane which hurt many people and destroyed many others' livelihoods. For ten years we have lived on an island where most cannot afford the basics of life. For example, our parents weren't able to afford medicine when they got sick and so they sadly passed away a few months ago. In the orphanage where we now live this cycle is beginning to repeat itself again. True the charity which runs things here sends us money to buy food, but there isn't enough for seventy of us to last until the next time they send money and although Marthe who is our cook tries not to let us know we know anyway from the anxious look on her face. And if we use extra money to buy enough food then we don't have enough for medicine which means more people will die. And it will be children dying. Even my youngest sister might - she's always had a weak chest. I don't mean to make you feel guilty, really I don't. You might read this and think that I am completely at fault for getting her and me and Élise into this situation, and sometimes I think so too, but our teacher says you're kind people and will help us anyway. I hope._

_Angélique Scoulier_

George half-smiled at the abrupt ending. As usual, Angelica was no-one's obedient servant, not even in a letter. He had to admire that, as well as the parenthesis in the address at the beginning. _'And Madams'._ He couldn't imagine there was much in the way of women's rights activism on the island, much less in the orphanage, but what he definitely could imagine was the eldest of the Scoulier sisters leading the way. Indeed, Eliza's letter, which he picked up next, was very similar. But somehow he doubted they'd cheated off each other. All of the children had thrown themselves into the task given with all their heart and soul, even little Peggy, who had concentrated for hours and produced this gem:

 _dere people_  
_~~je m'apel~~ i am peggy and thes is wat i want_  
_books for angi_  
_a harbrus_ [hairbrush] _for elisa_  
_food that dosnit tast all the sam_  
_for jams and helin and fransic and saly to get betur_  
_and for alex and jon to get maride_ [married] _it wood be nise even elesa sez so_  
_thank yoo from peggy_

He put it in the same envelope as Eliza's, writing the address on the front to the administrator at the George Hanover High School. Then he picked up a fresh ballpoint and began writing a letter of his own, to his former classes and whoever else at the school he could think of. Asking them to raise money quickly in whatever way Hanover would let them. Bake sales, concerts, fun runs, how many crackers can you eat in a minute competitions, you name it, they had all happened during his time as a teacher there, and each time they had raised thousands for many important causes. He hoped this letter would get there in time for them to get something together for the orphanage. This letter was put in the now considerably bulkier envelope along with the two sisters', and then he turned to the last of the pieces of paper that had been deposited on the desk. It was signed by Aaron and written in tiny, slanted handwriting:

_Dear Sirs,_

_I hope this letter finds you in good health, and in a prosperous enough position to put wealth into the pockets of people like us who are down on their luck. When I say 'us' I mean the boys and girls at the orphanage. That's where I live. It's not a very nice place. Some of the others say it's better than where they used to live. Maybe it is kind of better than my old house with pa, but the fact remains that my ~~friends~~ peers and I are quite unhappy._

_I don't want to say too much. I always used to get told to talk less and smile more and that way people wouldn't notice me in the wrong way, and I'd just, sort of, slip under the radar is the way you say it, I think. But this is really important because for ages it's been like I couldn't do anything to change things. I know lots of the others get together and make plots to steal Bishop Seabury's underwear or whatever, but I couldn't even do that tiny act of rebellion because I was too scared. But this way of doing things is so much nicer. I can just write down what I think instead of having to say it out loud. So here it is: I hate it here, I hate it! And I have an itemised list of reasons why:_

_1\. Seabury is always mean._  
_a. Not as mean as pa but still very nasty, especially to Aléx because he can't keep his mouth shut._  
_2\. The food is awful._  
_a. This is mainly because there isn't enough money for good food I believe._  
_b. Also because Seabury won't allow anything but plain dishes and he thinks eating goat is 'disgusting'._  
_3\. Marthe shaves my head every time we have haircuts._  
_a. I don't even have nits._  
_4\. There's only one small room for all us boys and it seems like we all snore. Also there aren't any windows. In the whole orphanage. No windows. Not one. They all got bashed up in the hurricane and we haven't had any new ones since._  
_5\. We don't get taught proper lessons, only stupid things like long lists of people from the Bible who had sons and the sons had sons and those sons had sons 'cause it never ends._  
_a. Also, we're not allowed to speak French. Not that I am so bothered about this because I always spoke English at home with pa, but for instance Theodosia knows very little English and is embarrassed to speak it ~~because she~~_

_I don't really expect you to send us money. I don't really expect you to send medicine so the sick kids can get better. They're going to die probably. That's okay. Lots of people die. I just kind of used this letter like a diary like Mr. Washington told us to so I could get all these things off my chest because I kind of felt like I was going to explode if I didn't get it out somehow. He might not even send the letters. We don't write very well at the orphanage as a rule especially the kids who have been here ever since they were babies. But I'm glad I got to write this anyway._

_I have the honour to be, sirs, your obedient servant,  
Aaron Bure (le 2me)_

George was actually about to set the crumpled sheet aside and collect up the other envelopes, when he realised that he couldn't do it. He couldn't single out Aaron because not only had he written the longest letter, even outstripping Alex in terms of word number, but he had followed his orders exactly, to the very letter. He had written everything down truthfully as he saw it. And just because it might not have such a good reception by whichever charity eventually received it didn't mean it wasn't perfectly valid. Aaron, the quietest of them all, deserved to have his voice heard at last. Plus, if George was being perfectly honest, it was the best-written of the letters. And that was saying something. He really hadn't expected to have such excellent submissions, and he felt a sort of fatherly pride towards - what did they call themselves - La Résistance.

He sealed and stamped the envelope before he had really thought about it, and wrote the address of a very high-profile aid organisation based in New York that made it its business to fund places of junior education in developing countries. What harm could it do?

As he stepped out into the swelteringly hot evening and unconsciously swiped at an over-eager mosquito that had had the audacity to buzz right in his face, he thought of Martha and how happy she would be if they received money enough to buy better food supplies. Angelica was right - Martha was worried, very, and he didn't know how he hadn't noticed it before. It was almost embarrassing how deeply in love he felt. The thing he most wanted in the world right now was to make her happy, and if it took feeding an entire orphanage to do it then by God that's what he would do.

He caught the captain of the tiny boat to Aruba just as he was ready to board.

 _"Could you please make sure these are delivered safe?"_ he asked formally, in French. The man grinned broadly and replied in pidgin with a careless wave of his arm.

 _"Sure. I'll put them right in the mail sack. They should get to the mainland by this time next week!"_ And he strolled up the gangplank with the precious letters in hand, whistling a merry tune. George had no way of knowing whether he was lying or telling the truth, but he could only hope. For Martha's sake. For the children's.

On the way back to the orphanage he dropped in at a small, weather-beaten store and used the very last of his money to buy some frankly dubious-looking Tylenol.

 _That's it, then,_ he thought to himself as a group of giggling teenagers ran past him dressed in not much besides swimming shorts. And that was all he allowed himself to think. Because if he thought about what was going to happen if the small stock of medicine he had garnered ran out before the letters reached the mainland...

Well, he didn't know whether he'd be able to hope for much longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment if you think Peggy deserves more recognition for her sublime five-year-old talent and literary skill! #RememberPeggy2k17


	8. La Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: someone's died and it's one of the kids. Happy endings for the rest of them, though, or at least we assume, so enjoy that.

Over the course of the week nine more children had fallen ill as well as the four already in the isolation room, but only twelve remained.

A seven-year-old boy called Phillip was dead.

George hadn't been with him at the time of his passing; he had been asleep in his little room upstairs after sitting up with the sick children all night. Seabury had been teaching downstairs. They hadn't heard so much as a sound from either Phillip or any of the other children. His death, said Martha later, had been quiet. Peaceful. George had woken up at perhaps eleven o'clock after five hours of sleep, gone to the isolation room to take over from Martha so she could prepare lunch, and found twelve sleeping children and one dead body. Under a sheet.

As soon as Martha had seen him come in she had broken down.

He couldn't say anything to comfort her; how could he? She was the one that had had experience with children dying under her care. Anything he had said would have been a meaningless platitude. So he just patted her back as she cried into his shoulder, trying not to blame himself and failing. If he'd only arrived on the island sooner. If he only hadn't broken the suspicious-looking bottles from the cabinet and bought new, ineffective medicine. If he'd only isolated Francis, James and Helen sooner. If only, if only, if only.

 _"He must have been so scared,"_ Martha wept, and was too upset to realise she was talking in French.

 _"He had you there,"_ George told her.

_"He was asking for his mother. I can't be that, I can't be a mother to seventy children! My God, it's been dozens of years and I still call Lafayette a 'he' and mix up Abigaël and Martinique. What kind of a mother does that make me?"_

_"A wonderful one. You've done so well. Given so much of your life to this place. The children love you, I know it."_

Martha nodded and abruptly pulled away from the man, dusting her hands off on her apron. "We shouldn't talk French," she said, not looking George in the eyes. "I'll go and inform the bishop about... about Phillip. You stay here. If Sally asks for paracetamol, don't give her any, we need to save it. And Ambrose needs a fresh wet rag on his head every hour or so to bring down his fever. Got it?"

"Got it," George confirmed, and although it made him despise himself even more, he took a seat in the corner furthest away from Phillip's mattress. Sally did wake up, and asked for paracetamol - more like begged, really - and he couldn't say anything, just held her clammy hand until she drifted back into a restless sleep. He re-soaked the cloth on Ambrose's head every hour on the dot. Thank goodness his watch still worked, or time would seem to drag on forever. He timed himself as he sat there, two hours, thirty-nine minutes, forty or so seconds. It seemed more like years until Martha came back in and managed a watery smile - for the childrens' sake, perhaps.

"Seabury's gone downtown to make arrangements for the funeral. You need to take arithmetic."

George nodded, and giving a final squeeze to Sally's hand, stood up and began to leave. Martha stopped him with a tiny cough before he'd gone halfway across the room, however, and he turned, not knowing what he'd hear next, but expecting the worst. (The worst? What was the worst anymore?) He certainly didn't expect to hear a muttered, "I saved you some sandwiches from lunch, _Georges_."

"Thanks," he said. " _Marthe_."

She held his eyes for a moment, then dropped them and busied herself trying to get a reluctant, nauseous Rebecca to drink some water. He turned once more and hurried down to the classroom, composing himself as best he could. He didn't roll down his sleeves even though it would have been more professional; the weather was far too hot for that. But he did straighten his tie and automatically put up a hand to smooth his now nonexistent hair. There was no one around to see that. Small blessings, he thought to himself with a morbid shudder.

The classroom could have been empty. There wasn't any talking or singing, not even the sound of crying, although George assumed the children would have been informed by now, and surely they weren't that inured to death that they didn't even cry anymore? He hated to think.

The door creaked as he pushed it open. Fifty-seven children twisted around immediately to look at him. Some of them were crying, but silently. Most weren't, although they all looked paler than usual, and shocked - very shocked. Nobody had expected Phillip to die. He was cheerful and strong and loudmouthed, unlike Francis, say, or James.

George shook his head just slightly and walked up to the front of the classroom, taking a piece of chalk with half-numb fingers. _"So, um, today I think we'll learn about the different instruments in an orchestra -"_

 _"They didn't work,"_ Alex interrupted, his voice low and toneless.

_"What?"_

_"The letters didn't work. They never sent the money. That's why Pip died."_ He was trying to rationalise it to himself, George realised. His friend couldn't just have died for no reason, so it must have been someone's fault. It must have been his, Alex's fault.

 _"It was only a week ago we wrote them, remember,"_ George reminded Alex. Reminded the whole room, reminded himself. _"We can hope -"_

All of a sudden, Thomas burst into loud, gulping sobs. _"There were so many spelling mistakes in mine,"_ he bawled.

"You think that's bad?" Laf asked tearfully and in English, huddling up to their brother. "Mine was only half a page long, it was terrible, awful."

_"Mine didn't have any punctuation."_

_"Mine went on for ages and ages and ages."_

_"Mine was part French and part English and part pidgin. No-one could read it. I couldn't even read it!"_

_"Guys,"_ George interrupted, starting to panic as more and more of La Résistance spoke up, blaming their own writing skills. _"Stop! STOP!"_

The room fell silent apart from Thomas' wretched hiccuping.

 _"I'm sorry for yelling. But you absolutely must not blame yourselves. When this kind of thing happens, we have to stop looking for somewhere to put the blame and go on with our lives. When you think of Phillipe I don't want you to feel guilty, I want you to remember how happy he was."_ He frantically tried to think of what he knew about the boy. Good God, there were so many of them. He couldn't even remember Phillip's face. Didn't he... yes! _"He liked singing, didn't he?"_

There were some nods. _"He liked counting, too,"_ Eliza said softly. _"And he made up poems."_

 _"Poems! Really?"_ George's voice was exaggeratedly curious to the point of desperation, but luckily all of them seemed to swallow this and began talking about other things they remembered about Phillip. Eventually he managed to tactfully steer them off this course and onto a more educational one, and apart from being a lot more subdued than they usually were the lesson continued as normal. Thank goodness.

Seabury returned some time later, red-eyed and uncoordinated. He might have been distraught, or conscience-stricken, or just drunk. George didn't know and honestly he didn't care. "Recess," he called, and the children slowly filed out of the classroom.

"You've heard the news," the bishop said heavily, dropping into the chair behind the classroom's one desk.

George sighed. "Yes. You ought to get some sleep, Seabury, you look terrible."

"The funeral is tomorrow."

"You'll be conducting the service?"

"Mm." He didn't seem to want to elaborate, but George's pointed look forced him to. "Happens more often than you'd think. Book of Common Prayer, _Jerusalem_ and a couple of men from the village to knock up a coffin and dig the grave. They do it gratis, of course. Good job, or I wouldn't know where to find the money."

"Indeed," George said, and then continued before he could stop himself. "The boy that died..."

"Ah, yes. Poor little Paul."

George felt bile rising in his throat and swallowed it down. He couldn't believe this man could be so callous. Did it honestly, truly matter that little to him? Or was he just so used to his children dying that each tragedy blurred into each other until he couldn't tell which was which? For the first time George wondered how long Seabury had been working at the orphanage. He might have been older than George, he might have been younger. He might have held his position as headmaster for forty years or ten. But he wasn't going to ask which it was. All he said was, "You're drunk, Samuel. Go to bed."

Seabury shrugged miserably and hauled himself off, black robes flapping behind him like wings. They didn't do much to get air into the horribly hot, still, muggy room, though, so George decided he'd step outside to make sure the children hadn't dissolved into tears of self-hatred again. Luckily that's not what had happened. They were screaming, though, words indiscernible in their excitement, and pointing up at the sky. George blinked to adjust his eyes to the sun and looked up. There was a helicopter flying overhead.

Helicopters didn't fly over Saint-Denis. Ever.

 _"What is it, who is it, Monsieur George, what's happening?"_ A barrel of questions were shot at George so fast he didn't have time to even think about them. He simply started running.

George was fifty-two years old and he would readily admit that he was perhaps on the less fit side for even that age. He had no idea how he managed to run at quite a respectable pace all the way down the path to the village and across the sandy main road - the inhabitants of Saint-Denis were crowding the streets, necks cricked up to watch the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of the helicopter flying overhead, but he pushed through them with very little regard for manners - to the beach. Sure enough, that's where the yellow vehicle landed, with a gust of wind that almost knocked the teacher off his feet and a whirr of blades that nearly deafened him. He screwed up his eyes against the sandy breeze and saw what was printed on the side of the copter.

_RCA. The Rochambeau Charitable Agency._

George let out an undignified gasp (but then again, pretty much everything he'd done that day was undignified by his usual standards, so that was nothing new) and inwardly thanked every deity he knew. The letters had worked. And as he stepped forward to introduce himself to the disembarking men and women, he almost stumbled over his words of gratitude.

"The name's Grasse. Pleased to meet you, Mr... Seabury?" The man introducing himself was tall and clean-shaven with wiry grey hair and an awful sunburn.

"Washington," George shouted to be heard over the noise of the helicopter, shaking the man's hand. "I... the letters. You got them?"

"We received one, and so did our sister organisation in Chicago. Mr. Washington, we were astounded by the contents. We had no idea there was even a children's home on Saint-Denis, not to mention one with seventy inhabitants."

"Sixty-nine."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sixty-nine. Phillip died this morning."

"Oh." Grasse looked horrified. "I'm so sorry. I had no idea. When I read in the letters that you had a case of illness I never imagined - but we have paramedics and stretchers, and we can get whoever we need to the nearest hospital within an hour."

George felt himself relax just a little, tension seeping out of his posture that he hadn't known had been there. This was better than he had ever dreamed of, and although it wasn't impossible that they would be unable to save all of the sick children, at least the hope that he had been slowly losing was returning in full force. "Mr. Grasse, I don't know how to thank you."

"No need, sir. It's what we do. But..." and as a crowd of volunteers (medics?) rushed by them and, assisted by a larger crowd of slightly shellshocked villagers, made their way up to the orphanage, Grasse leaned in to George with a regretful face. "I'm afraid we won't be able to assist you in everything. Fixing the building, for instance, is way beyond our budget. I'm very sorry, but we will do what we can to raise money for food, clothing and school supplies, for instance."

"That's more than I could have hoped for," George assured him, shaking Grasse's hand again, with both his own this time.

"I'm glad you feel that way. What exactly -"

"Mr. Grasse," put in a woman who had appeared next to them a few moments ago. "There's a letter here from New York. Brought here by boat, I believe. It's for a George Washington?"

George thanked her and took the letter. When he saw who it was from, though, he nearly let go of it again, which would have been disastrous in the strong gusts of wind from the helicopter blades. His school - his old school, to which he'd sent two of the kids' letters.

It couldn't be. Could it?

The teacher's hands were shaking as he ripped open the envelope and pulled out a pale slip of paper. He scanned it. His jaw dropped.

"Are you alright?" inquired Grasse with a frown.

George couldn't answer for a second, and then he shook his head. "Oh, Peggy," he whispered. "You little marvel."

A cheque lay in his hand for seven thousand, three hundred and nineteen dollars and thirty-one cents. He'd known the school wouldn't ignore the letters, but he'd never expected this. Especially with Principal Hanover having probably tried to block every fundraiser the students dared to set up. Seven thousand dollars. _Seven thousand._ That might not have been enough to rebuild an orphanage in America, but on Saint-Denis? He doubted the entire gross national product equalled half as much. He was holding in his hand enough money to change the children's lives - no. The lives of everyone on the island.

"Washington. Mr. Washington!"

George snapped out of it. Grasse was waving his hand in front of his face, grinning broadly. "Can I take it we have enough to fund this project?"

"Yes," George said with a disbelieving laugh. "You can."

 

* * *

 

**TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER**

George Washington didn't require much in his old age. Just a comfortable chair, a good book and a pot of coffee and he was happy. The house he shared with his wife Martha on the island of Saint-Denis was small and rugged but up-to-date, just like all the buildings on the island were now. Many of the children that now lived in the orphanage where he had worked once were amazed that there had ever been a time when there wasn't electricity on Saint-Denis.

 _"That must have been ages ago,"_ they would say, round-eyed in their awe.

 _"Stop it,"_ George would say back, smiling. _"You make me feel old."_

 _"You are old,"_ Martha would tell him then, kissing his forehead. _"But so am I, love. It's been a while since life expectancy was in the teens here. We ought to go on for a while yet."_

George would kiss her back to a chorus of disgusted groans from the children and a delighted smile from their headmistress, Ms. Scoulier, whom you and I knew as Eliza. Yes, Eliza was running the orphanage now, not Angelica - the eldest of the three sisters was too headstrong and ambitious for that. The second sister, though, suited the role down to the ground. The children revered her and she adored them. She still kept in regular touch with her sisters, who now lived off the island, but she had never wanted to join them. She was content with a simple life and a loving family. Just like George and Martha. The Washingtons' love wasn't very passionate (they certainly weren't young enough for that) but it was something wonderful which George cherished with all his heart. He could never assure his wife too many times that it was enough just to be by her side, to eat together, to read to each other, to laugh together. In their retirement there was a lot of laughter. Martha was laughing now, actually, from the little kitchen as she talked to someone on the telephone.

_"Ouais, nous allons le regarder! Bien sûr! Je l'attendais depuis plusieurs semaines! Non. Oui. Non. Non! Ah, à bientot, mon chér. Au revoir!"_

She hung up and came through into the living room, excitement written all over her face as she spoke to her husband in English. "George, turn on the television, yeah?"

"Sure." It was obvious his wife had a surprise for him, and George was perfectly happy to remain in ignorance until she saw fit to reveal it. Perhaps his favourite movie was on, _1776_. They only got three channels, so that wasn't likely, but he couldn't think of anything else that she would be so secretive about.

She settled down into the chair next to his as he pushed the largest button on the old-fashioned remote control. The news came on, and he was about to flick over (he hated watching the news; politics lately was so hectic that he couldn't keep up) when Martha laid a hand on his arm. "Just watch, love."

He did.

There were a few minutes of weather forecast: it was going to be sunny and hot, what a surprise. Then the correspondent handed things over to the main reporter, a pretty young woman in a purple jacket. "Thank you, Harry," she smiled to the camera. "Now let'th - pardon, let's -"

George chuckled. Some things never changed.

"Let's go over to our American correspondent live in DC with the results of the presidential election, Jean-Maurice. Jean?"

"Thanks, Théodosie. Well, it's a really thrilling result for us all both on the islands and the mainland, as for the first time in history a native West Indian has been elected as president of the United States..."

George tuned him out. Truth be told, he hadn't even known there was going to be an election; he was perfectly happy sitting under his 'own vine and fig tree', like the Scripture said. Why had Martha shown him this? Even if it was an islander that was going to be President, which was obviously unprecedented, he didn't understand why she had been so excited.

And then he heard the correspondent say, "... and I believe we have a camera at his inaugural speech, so ladies and gentlemen, here for you today is the first Caribbean-born US President, Aléxandre Faucette-Laurens."

George nearly jumped out of his chair in shock. There, addressing the nation, addressing television screens all around the world, was the same little Alex - he still was short, none of them had grown to an above average height, for obvious reasons - who had fought with Thomas and sulked about losing at tag and kissed John and punched George in the knee twenty-five years ago, who had written one of the letters that had changed the lives of everyone on the island forever, who had quite literally written his way out.

_The President of the United States._

"You did that," whispered Martha, laying her head on his shoulder.

George shook his head, eyes full of tears for the first time in a long time. "No. We did it. Him, and you, and me, and all of them. We did it."

They stayed there for a while, Martha and George, watching Alex give one of his brilliant speeches, John beside him radiant with joy, and listening to the DC crowd cheer. Was George proud?

All I will say is that pride wasn't the word he was looking for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Rochambeau and Grasse were French generals in the Revolutionary War. You know 'Lafayette was there waiting in Chesapeake Bay'? Lies. It was Grasse all the way.)
> 
> IT'S OVER! GUYS, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR STICKING THROUGH WITH THIS SLIGHTLY ODD AU! I love you all!
> 
> PS. don't forget to leave a comment! :)
> 
> PPS. please check out this honestly amazing and v poignant animatic made by AO3 user TrashyFrotaku and based on 'Rabble': https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=awMjWjpaYWQ

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Horizon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10788210) by [Akiradrabbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akiradrabbles/pseuds/Akiradrabbles)




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